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Dozens of residents throughout the county have taken on the task of living on a $25 food budget this week as part of Manna Food Center's Food Stamp Challenge.

Amy Gabala, executive director of Manna Food Center in Rockville, said the idea of the challenge, which began Sunday, is to bring attention to the growing problem of hunger in Montgomery County and to demonstrate how difficult it is to eat nutrititiously on food stamps.

Each person in the challenge is allotted $25 for food for the week, the average food stamp benefit for one person, she said. That amount works out to about $1 a meal.

Valerie Levanos, a resident of the King Farm community in Rockville, said she thinks her family will learn a great deal.

"I have a 4-year-old daughter who has a very generous spirit and is always looking for a way to help others," she said. "So when I found out about this challenge through Manna's e-mail list, I thought it'd be a very good way for her to be able to do something that she'd understand at her age."

Levanos, who also has a 2-year-old daughter, said her family will live on $100 worth of groceries for the week, compared to the $200 she normally spends.

"I think it's going to be difficult because I'm going to have to think about it more," she said on Thursday. "I usually plan meals for the week by what's in season, but now I'm going to have to plan by what we can afford."

At the end of the week, she said her family plans to donate $100 to Manna, the additional money they ordinarily would have spent on groceries.

The idea of the challenge is not new, Gabala said, but is something Manna wanted to try. A couple of years ago, the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that works to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in the United States, encouraged national lawmakers to participate in a similar challenge. Since then, people across the country have chosen to experience living on food stamps for a short time period to better understand what hunger is really like.

"With the worsening economy and high cost of gas, it seems like a really good time to bring to people's attention how hard it is to eat well on a limited income or on food stamps," Gabala said. "More and more families in Montgomery County are finding it difficult to put food on the table."

Manna is experiencing a 25 percent increase in the number of families requesting help with food, she said.

From June to July, there was a 2 percent increase in county residents applying for food stamps, which was higher than both Prince George's and Howard counties, she added. Statistics from July 2007 to July of this year show a 15 percent increase.

"Manna just hopes that the Food Stamp Challenge will educate people about the problem of hunger in Montgomery County," she said, noting she is participating in the challenge. County Council President Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown is also participating.

Manna, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, fights hunger in the county through food distribution, education and advocacy. Gabala said the center feeds "600 hungry families and 600 hungry elementary-school children each week."