The most critical need for food banks and food pantries is money. So the Donate button is going right here so that you can't miss it.
For every $1 you donate, Feeding America helps provide 8 meals to men, women and children facing hunger in our country. This month, Ameriprise Financial will match your donation which means that your $1 will provide 16 meals. Your $10 will provide 160 meals and your $3,254,434.81 will feed every hungry person in America. (Doesn't hurt to ask ...)
For 1 in 6 Americans, hunger is a reality. Right now, millions of Americans are struggling with hunger.
Community food pantries are the connection between the food banks and those in need.
First, a little background on the food bank.
Feeding America has some pretty simple origins:
In the late 1960s, John van Hengel, a retired businessman in Phoenix, Arizona began volunteering at a local soup kitchen, and began soliciting food donations for the kitchen. He ended up with far more food than the kitchen could use in its operations. Around this time, he spoke with one of the clients, who told him that she regularly fed her family with discarded items from the grocery store's garbage bins. She told him that the food quality was fine, but that there should be a place where unwanted food could be stored and later accessed by people who needed it, similar to how banks store money.
Van Hengel began to actively solicit this unwanted food from grocery stores, local gardens, and nearby produce farms. His effort led to the creation of St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, the nation's first food bank.
(I want to pause here for minute to think about a time when a food kitchen had too much food).
The food banks became Second Harvest which in turn became Feeding America in 2008:
Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Our mission is to feed America's hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.
Each year, the Feeding America network provides food to more than 37 million low-income people facing hunger in the United States, including 14 million children and nearly 3 million seniors.
Our network of more than 200 food banks serves all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, securing and distributing more than 2.5 billion pounds of food and grocery products annually. Those member food banks support approximately 61,000 local charitable agencies and 70,000 programs, which provide food directly to individuals and families in need.
The Food Bank "feeds" the Community Food Pantry so it can feed the community.
There are three things that a Community Food Pantry needs to survive:
1. Donations
2. Volunteers
3. Community
I found the web site of a nearby food pantry in Dane County Wisconsin and will share the information about it here. It is probably not typical in that it serves a community of about 25,000 and is in a suburb of a city (Madison) that has not been hit as hard as others by the Great Recession (although that is changing since the FitzWalkers cut away the social safety net and handed it to the wealthy to shore up their wine racks. But I digress).
Here is the 2010 recap from the web site of the Sun Prairie Emergency Food Pantry:
• In 2010 the number of times families used the Food Pantry was 6,740. And as part of this, children were helped by the Pantry 11,000 times.
• Including the Thanksgiving Food Baskets and the Mobile Food Pantry, approximately 543,000 pounds of food was distributed through the Food Pantry in 2010--an increase over the previous year by almost 31,000 pounds.
• Expenses for 2010 were approximately $109,000, compared to $103,000 the previous year. Again, the vast majority of the expense going towards the purchase of food.
• During this same period, income from donations totaled nearly $117,000.00, compared to $127,000 in 2009--a decrease in revenue by 8.2%.
• Families can use the Pantry once every 30 days. An average of 70 pounds of food is distributed each time a family utilizes the Pantry.
The high usage of the Food Pantry does not come as a surprise given the continued economic hardships of 2010. [...]
We have been able to manage our expenses quite well by taking taking full advantage of our partnerships with Second Harvest, the Community Action Coalition as well as area grocery stores and wholesale food distributors. By using these organizations the Pantry is assured of getting as much food as it can, and as economically as possible, by securing it for free or a significantly reduced price. However, enough cannot be said about the generosity of the community. This component has and will continue to be the foundation of any success the Food Pantry has in serving those in need of our services.
Securing the food is the first step in the process. Distribution of this much food takes a significant amount of work and coordination from a dedicated volunteer group. This is accomplished not by any one person or group but by literally hundreds of volunteers in the community. The number of hour volunteers spent collecting, stocking and distributing over half a million pounds of food is every bit as significant as the food and dollars donated.
The Second Harvest Mobile Food Pantry has also been an integral part of the Pantry. Working with Second Harvest, clients can collect additional food, which is distributed on the last Tuesday of each month. This year, the Mobile Food Pantry has provided approximately 77,000 pounds of food for families in need at no cost to the Food Pantry.
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The three components:
1. Donations.
Donations are money, non-perishable food items and personal care/household items. It should not surprise anyone that people who need help feeding their family also do not have money to buy personal care and household items. This includes items like shampoo, toothpaste, soap, diapers, baby wipes, baggies, aluminum foil and other things that people need and which are distributed by the food pantry.
2. Volunteers
If you look closely at the "income" of the food pantry there is not a lot of money for paid help. Volunteers are crucial to the organization and they do things like pick up food donations, stock the shelves and help the people who are served by the food pantry during the hours it is open. In one of the Feeding America diaries it was estimated that the value of an hour of volunteer time to a food pantry is $17. Volunteers giving their time means more money that can be spent on food.
3. Community.
The ties to the community are crucial to the success or failure of the local food pantry. City government, the schools, the churches, fraternal organizations.
The facts and the faces
Here are the raw numbers from Feeding America:
Use of Emergency Food Assistance and Federal Food Assistance Programs
In 2010, 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.2
In 2010, 59.2 percent of food-insecure households participated in at least one of the three major Federal food assistance programs –Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program), The National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.2
Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to an estimated 37 million low-income people annually, a 46 percent increase from 25 million since Hunger in America 2010.
Among members of Feeding America, 74 percent of pantries, 65 percent of kitchens, and 54 percent of shelters reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites.4
But Hunger in America is more than numbers: pounds and dollars. Hunger in America has a face...the faces of those who depend on food pantries to survive. Hunger in America affects 1 in 6 people and they are the people in this video.
How you can help
Feeding America locates food surplus and intercepts it on its way to the trash and distributes it to food banks all over the country. They do not buy most of their food, which is why they can provide meals so efficiently. They collect from vendors, grocery stores, and restaurants all over the country. Plenty of food is out there -- the problem is one of logistics, transportation, and distribution.
Because Feeding America redistributes surplus, they can provide healthy meals cheaply. Ninety five cents on every dollar that you donate here goes to food distribution. Donating to Feeding America is one of the most efficient ways that you can help aid hungry people.
Even $1 will help. Click on the icon above.
If you have the means, please donate to Feeding America by clicking on the box to the right. In addition to supplying food banks all over the country, they help hungry kids through their Backpack Program, Kids Cafe, Summer Food, and School Pantry programs. And this month, Ameriprise Financial will match your donation -- which means that every dollar you donate provides 16 meals to hungry people.
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All times Eastern!
Saturday, Oct 15:
9:00a -- noweasels with Hunger Lives Near You
12:00p -- teacherken with Our Children are Unhealthy
3:00p -- TheFatLadySings with Fighting Hunger in My Community
6:00p -- blue jersey mom with A Challenge in Honor of My Mom
9:00p -- JayinPortland with Checking in from Oregon
Owls -- Timroff with Feeding Occupiers and the Homeless
Sunday, Oct 16
9:00a -- rb137 with Is it real food?
12:00p -- JanF < --- You are here!
3:00p -- Aji with Windigo - Hunger in Native America
5:00p -- Patric Juillet with Food Wastrels
7:00p -- Chacounne with Hunger in Vancouver
10:00p -- boatsie with DIVE - SHARE - FEED
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We are proud to be taking part in Blog Action Day OCT 16 2011 www.blogactionday.org