Children are arriving at school without having eaten a morning meal according to a children's agency.

A rash of phone calls from teachers during the first week of school points to a far-reaching society problem, the group's head has warned.

The Coalition for the Protection of Children has launched a breakfast voucher programme called `A Breakfast For Every Child' through the MarketPlace chain of supermarkets which donated $5,000 toward the initiative and allowed the Coalition to set up their programme on its premises.

Grocery shoppers are asked to donate money towards the $20 vouchers which will then be distributed to needy families. They can only be used to buy healthy breakfast foods including cereals, bread and milk and should buy enough food to feed a child for a week.

Eager participants can also call the Coalition at 295-1150 to obtain the vouchers and companies are urged to take up collections in the workplace in a bid to feed a number of children.

Coalition chairwoman Sheelagh Cooper said: "We have received a number of calls from teachers already this year about kids coming to class not having had breakfast. We often get calls because teachers know we'll bring lunch to them but it is early to be getting them already.

"Our contribution to the literacy campaign which Government launched last week is to make sure kids have breakfast before they try to learn how to read.

"Imagine trying to teach a kid who is hungry.'' The number of children affected by the problem has prompted the Coalition to launch the special campaign, said Mrs. Cooper.

She recognised it was only a temporary solution to a growing problem as the number of calls pointed to the level of poverty amongst single mothers becoming increasingly desperate.

"The gap has widened over the last ten years to make this a critical situation,'' she warned.

Quoting the Newman Report, which was issued in November, 1994, Mrs. Cooper said: "Fifty percent of the black single-mother households with children live below the poverty line.

"That report is a few years old,'' she continued. "If anything, it is probably worse. We estimate that between ten and 15 percent of Bermuda's children live below Bermuda's poverty line.'' The figure that was touted a few years ago as an estimated line of poverty was an income of $30,000 for a family with two kids, said Mrs. Cooper.

Island's children are going hungry Other equations used to estimate whether a person was above or below the line included whether or not a person's housing required more or less than 30 percent of their annual income, she added.

"I do not use that as a description for the poverty line here because of the outrageous housing situation,'' said Mrs. Cooper.

Families making $30,000 per year with two children were in an impossible situation when it came to providing the necessities of food, clothing and housing, she continued.

"It's a horrible feeling for mothers. Do I pay the rent or feed my children? These are the kinds of choices that are having to be made here. There are some neglectful mothers and that is also a big concern but I think the majority do not want to do this.

"We get calls from mothers all the time who say `I have no food' so we go shopping with them. We must get one of these types of calls at least every day.

"Some mothers are too proud to phone us so they quietly say `sorry there's nothing to eat'.'' Mrs. Cooper said one reason behind the increased number of families facing the problem of providing the necessities was the downturn in the hotel industry.

A lot of the affected women would have traditionally been employed by hotels in roles such as chambermaids, she said, but this source of jobs was drying up as hotels closed, putting the mothers out of work.

Work they were able to find tended to be low-paying and part-time and even having two or more of these types of jobs was not enough to provide the necessities for their families.

This time of year was particularly hard for them, noted Mrs. Cooper, as it also required them to scrape together the money for school uniforms and supplies which the beginning of the school year called for -- plus the regular challenges of paying rent and buying food.