If Only….
Janet Poppendieck wrote a book entitled “Sweet Charity” about hunger in America. I found a quote of hers on the internet which inspired this post.
There’s all this food out there. Most people who know about hunger agree that there’s enough food for everyone. If we can stop the push back on this concept, and just feed the people, our lives (everyone’s lives in the whole country) will be very different. Imagine a world without hungry children and grandmothers.
Just for a moment, let’s think of all the ways we can benefit our many people and institutions by using this food.
For starters, think of pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, halfway houses as our tax dollars at work. Much of the emergency food effort is manned by volunteers diverting food headed for the landfill. For my $$$, this recycling effort works primarily to keep people from starving in the streets.
Now, consider the United States Department of Agriculture. As our country accumulates agricultural surpluses, instead of being embarrassed by the food, life will be better when the USDA proudly distributes the surplus to those in need. After all, surplus food is an uptown problem. It’s almost impossible to produce only exactly what we need. Farms just don’t work that way. Weather doesn’t always cooperate. Droughts don’t come by request. Floods have minds of their own. It’s better to produce too much than too little.
Businesses can and should ship excess food to pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, halfway houses. This is a responsible way to dispose of unwanted excess food products. When businesses donate to food banks, they avoid excessive dump fees and accrue tax savings. They reduce dumpster diving.
Universities, hospitals, caterers, restaurants, bakers, schools, can use the food banks to absorb leftovers. In metropolitan areas, the surplus food can go directly to soup kitchens, pantries. This is both a civic responsibility and community outreach.
Community colleges and Universities can recognize that there are impoverished students in their ranks. Pantries and soup kitchens on campus will make it easier for these students to stay in school.
Elementary, Middle, and High Schools will do well to recognize the poverty among the students and staff. Food pantries have a definite place in schools. Backpack programs belong in every school to ensure that students have enough food to eat over the weekends and holidays.
Churches, synagogues, and other religious institutions have opportunities to express concern for their fellow man as they include the poor at the table. Congregations refer to their feeding efforts as outreach. These necessary hunger prevention programs help feed people who otherwise would not have enough to eat and they give the congregations a local outlet for their charity and outreach programs.
Courts and penal institutions can use this concept by having people work service hours at pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, etc. to avoid or lessen incarceration.
Working at a pantry, soup kitchen or shelter provides service opportunities for people of all ages. The more people donate time, the less isolated these facilities become.
Diverting food from landfills offers communities an opportunity to improve our environment. Besides, why throw away good food?
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Thurman Greco
7 Ways We Use Food Pantries
Food Pantries feed the hungry…and very successfully at that, actually. After all, there are very few stories right now about starving people dying in the streets. We Food Pantry volunteers can pat ourselves on the back for that, at least.
But, so much more happens in a Food Pantry beyond feeding the hungry.
For starters, thousands of volunteers are kept gainfully occupied and off the streets as we (wo)man the pantries.
The United States Department of Agriculture disposes of thousands and thousands of pounds of surplus foods every year in Food Pantries. Unfortunately, though, the USDA seems to have a somewhat embarrassed attitude about the distribution of agricultural surpluses. Anybody who thinks about it quickly realizes that it’s impossible to grow just exactly what we need every year. It’s much better to have too much than too little. So, the USDA needs the Food Pantries to dispose of this surplus. Sure beats hauling it off to the landfill.
Thank you USDA! I just wish you felt better about the job you do.
Supermarkets use Food Pantries to dispose of food they can’t sell. By donating produce,
baked goods,
meats,
packaged shelf staples,
grocers avoid dump fees, discourage dumpster divers, accrue tax savings, and tell the world about how many thousands of dollars they donated to feed the hungry.
Churches throughout this country feed the hungry in Food Pantries located in their basements. That is, all except for the famous St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco where Sara Miles put the pantry on the altar. She subsequently wrote a book about it entitled “Take This Bread”. I hope you get a chance to read it.
Congregations label their Food Pantries as outreach but I don’t buy into that concept. What we’re all doing, really, is celebrating the enormous abundance existing in this country…in this world…on this planet.
Environmentalists use Food Pantries to divert food bound for the landfill. It’s amazing when you think about it. Several million people in our country are prevented from starving to death when they shop at a Food Pantry and take home produce, dairy products, meats, baked goods, shelf staples that would otherwise have ended up at the landfill.
Schools throughout our fair nation distribute food to children to take home on the weekend. The Backpack Programs offer food to children who have none in their households.
It’s a real ego trip for whole segments of our society. Everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about food donated to Food Banks. This includes farmers, grocers, food manufacturers, restaurants, bakers, religious and civic institutions feeding the hungry, and, of course, the people who read the stories about the generosity of these businesses.
This warm and fuzzy feeling we all get when we realize which businesses are contributing to feeding the hungry rubs off positively on Food Banks. They, thankfully, are very influential charities as a result. Food Banks rank right up there with hospitals, the United Way, and the Y.
And, it’s all good. Food Banks need the $$$ to keep the whole industry going. The demand for the food keeps growing and growing because the minimum wage jobs don’t pay enough $$$ to allow workers to buy groceries. SNAP benefits get whittled away each year. There’s not much left except the Food Pantry.
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http://teamnutrition.usda.gov
www.feedingamerica.org/officialsite
www.reservoirfoodpantry.org
Thurman Greco
Food Bank of the Hudson Valley Throws a Party
Every year, in May, the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, throws a party. The employees who spend every working moment getting food together to feed the hungry, make time in their schedules to put together a wonderful dinner honoring the Food Bank and agency volunteers. On this special evening, the cavernous storeroom is transformed into a large dining hall complete with enough tables and chairs (donated by the Storm King Engine Company #2) to seat at least 235 people.
While the transformation is performed by the employees at the Food Bank, most everything else is a community effort.
The delicious menu at this year’s event was a combined effort of C & S Wholesale, who gave the food and Nick Zitera of Cosimos’s Restaurant. This collaboration, overseen by Toni Gutter and Jessica Fetonti offered a special selection for the guests: lemon chicken, roast pork, toss salad with a specially prepared sesame seed dressing, green beans in an oriental sauce, tortellini Alfredo.
Dessert was a delicious cake prepared by Hannaford’s Bakery and served with freshly brewed coffee.
Other beverages served during the evening were donated by Pepsi Cola.
Fresh flowers were on every table.
An agency is honored every year. The 2014 honoree is Helping Hands Food Pantry of Dover Plains. A table full of volunteers from Helping Hands came to the dinner. They brought their longest standing volunteer who has been serving at Helping Hands since it opened over 30 years ago.
Roberta Sherman and Tom Coons, two Food Bank volunteers, were honored this year.
So what is the moral of this story? The moral is this: even though employees of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley are focused on getting food to the hungry, they have space in their schedules and their hearts to honor people who themselves are so immersed in feeding the hungry that they don’t even realize they need this recognition.
When people are totally focused on give, give, give, they forget they might need to have their own spiritual tanks refilled occasionally. So, then, along comes the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley offering a banquet meal to fill not only the body but the soul.
To the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, I say “Thank you.”
To the rest of us I ask “How can we help the people of the Food Bank refill their spiritual tanks?”
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy and the Take Outs
“New people somehow suggest to you that your world is really not as narrow as maybe you believed it was. You’re not so limited by your psychological environment as maybe you thought you were.” – Leonard Michaels
The next series of chapters focuses on a very important part of the pantry life which we have not yet touched on: our Take Out Department which served food to homebound residents.
As a pantry, we never planned to deliver food to homebound people in the Woodstock area. But, to make a really bad joke, the building committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church made us do it.
This is the story: Pantries are required to have volunteers available to serve shoppers on an emergency basis if they call and can’t make it to the pantry when it’s open. Well, Good Neighbor Food Pantry volunteers weren’t allowed in the pantry except during select hours on select days. So, we needed an alternative acceptable to the Food Bank. We created a Take Out Department to deliver food to homebound households.
Our Take Out Department became enormously successful. It was also a tremendous amount of work for the volunteers. We began with insufficient structure and a few volunteers lost sight of the guidelines and rules. One volunteer felt that the 10-mile limit included all of her friends living in an area around Route 32 north of Saugerties. She also felt her mother who lived several hours away was on the route and that a three-day supply of food for her mother included everything she could fit into her car on the way up. She was also lax with the monthly reporting.
Peggy Johnson took over the Take Out Department.
Peggy organized all the Take Outs. she called every household monthly to see how things were going. She made great lists of all the foods they would, could, should eat and great lists of all foods they would not, could not, should not eat. Peggy knew her clients better than they knew themselves.
Peggy was strict with the rules. She didn’t have even one client who lived beyond the 10-mile limit imposed by our Board of Directors. Peggy was strict with her volunteers also. She insisted everyone follow the HPNAP guidelines exactly. And…Peggy demanded proper manners in the pantry. One month Peggy dismissed a volunteer on the monthly delivery day. Whew!
We had one young volunteer who was a computer whiz. She really didn’t want to work in the take outs. What she wanted to do was completely computerize our pantry and be some kind of “Jedi” for our lists, etc. Her hope was to computerize our pantry and use this experience to launch other projects for other pantries. (I honestly don’t think she realized how poor pantries really are.)
It was a good idea but never materialized because on one monthly delivery day Peggy caught her comparing tattoos with one of the Hudson Correctional Facility volunteers. Peggy spoke with her and she never saw her again. We never saw her again either.
In our next post, we’ll focus on the volunteers who made the take out department possible.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
