MANSFIELD, Mass. — The economy is in turmoil.

Foreclosure rates are high, and unemployment in Rhode Island was at 9.3 percent last month — the highest since 1983.

As a result, there are more and more families that are in danger of going hungry every day.

With at least 12 percent of Rhode Island’s population with an income below the poverty line, according to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, those families, which include more than 122,000 people, have trouble putting food on the table on a daily basis.

Boston point guard Rajon Rondo knows this and he wants to do everything he can to help those families out.

Yesterday Rondo held a news conference at Shaw’s Supermarket in Mansfield, in partnership with Shaw’s and the Rhode Island Food Bank, for their ninth annual Spirit of Giving campaign, to urge New Englanders to donate to their local food banks to help out families in need.

“I’m just glad to be here and be a part of something like this,” Rondo said. “This is going to do something great for a lot of families.”

“It makes my heart warm with anything I can do to help, especially being in the situation that I’m in, being a professional athlete,” Rondo added. “If all I had to do was get up in the morning and come support a cause, I would do this every morning if I could, especially to feed that many families and impact that many lives.”

The Rhode Island Food Bank has distributed more than 8 million pounds of food to emergency food programs, including food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters over the past calendar year.

These programs, with sites in 28 of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns, provided more than 10 million meals to people in need.

“This means a lot to me,” Rondo said of being able to help out the Rhode Island Food Bank. “I’m a very caring person. I was raised that way by my mother and anything that I can do to help people in need, I always want to have a helping hand in assisting someone.”

Shaw’s and the Food Bank are happy to have Rondo as a spokesman.

“When people see him giving back, it makes them want to give, too,” said the director of the Food Bank, Andrew Schiff.

A class from the Wolf School in East Providence was also at the news conference.

They are collecting food to donate to the Food Bank. They presented Rondo and the Food Bank with personalized cards with a drawing of their favorite food on the front of it, and inside, they wrote how they feel when they are hungry.

“We want to contribute and we want the kids to learn about it because they don’t know what it’s like to be truly hungry,” Wolf School community teacher Janice Colagreco said. “When they internalize how they feel when they are hungry, they can think about kids who haven’t had food for a while. It teaches them empathy and to feel what others are feeling and hopefully it will get them to know and understand and to contribute to our service learning program. They’re good kids and they like to offer themselves up to the community.”

After collecting food, the Wolf School children will pack it, deliver it, and unload it at a local food bank.

“It will be a great experience for them,” Colagreco said. “They’re excited about it. They did it last year also. We’re glad to help.”

There are more and more families in need of food, but funding has been cut, Schiff said.

The Food Bank is feeding 40,000 Rhode Islanders each month through a network of 285 certified member agency programs, which reflects an increase of 12 percent over last year.

But the General Assembly cut grant funding to the R.I. Food Bank by 50 percent, from $384,000 to $192,000, which resulted in a loss of 1.5 million pounds of food, from 10 million to 8.5 million.

“We have found recently that the amount of food going out of the Food Bank is ahead of the food that we’re bringing in,” Schiff said. “This type of campaign, The Spirit of Giving, is coming at a great time, because demand is really high and supply is really low.”

Rondo’s appearance at Shaw’s brought in crowds of onlookers. He signed a number of autographs, took pictures with fans, and urged them to help donate to the Food Bank. Shaw’s is making it convenient for shoppers to donate to the Food Bank.

While shopping at Shaw’s from now through Dec. 20, customers can grab a prepackaged bag of food — ranging in price from $5 to $15 — when they checkout and place them in the Shaw’s collection bins upon leaving the store.

“Last year they collected over 20,000 pounds of food,” Schiff said. “That was a tremendous effort and that was just for Rhode Island. … People are really struggling and they are turning towards food pantries and soup kitchens and emergency shelters.”

According to the Food Bank, there are 48,000 families in Rhode Island that don’t know where their next meals will come from.

Families in need can call 211 for help, Schiff said, or go to www.rifoodbank.com to read about the different programs being offered.

roblee@projo.com