Preventing Senior Hunger
For years, I’ve been blogging and writing books about hunger in America in general and senior hunger specifically.
Senior hunger is not going away anytime soon.
If you read my blog posts, then you are probably interested in senior hunger. Recently I came across a guide which you will want to read.
To learn more about senior hunger, access it here: https://onlinegrad.baylor.edu/resources/seniors-food-insecurity-hunger/
Thanks for reading this article and thanks for your interest and action.
I hope you’ll not only read this article but will also share it wherever you feel it might be appropriate.
This new resource may be of interest to readers everywhere. The goal is to help open a dialogue in our country about senior hunger.
Thank you for your time and thank you for your concern about seniors and hunger.
Thurman Greco
Please share this post with your preferred social media network.
The Homeless
The homeless have problems just like you and me: employment, health issues, disabilities, domestic violence. They just don’t have a roof over their heads.
Homeless people, families enter food pantries very quietly. They’ve lost their voices. The goal is to melt into the background, get food, and disappear.
There’s an exception to the voicelessness – when the person communicates with beings unknown to the rest of us. One shopper I know has been in another world since before I began working in the pantry in 2005. He communicates in a high, shrill, unknown tongue which I cannot describe. His shrill vowels are punctuated with hard, sharp whistles, clicks, squeaks.
We can all help homeless people in some way. Each of us has talents and skills which can be useful.
DONATE. Homeless people carry their kitchens in their pockets . So much food which we take for granted is just not helpful. Important in the homeless diet is peanut butter and crackers in individually wrapped packages, cereal in self-serve packaging. Fruits and vegetables which can be eaten raw, milk and/or fruit juice in individual containers. Donate these items throughout the year by regularly giving the food to a food pantry in your area which is homlesss friendly.
VOLUNTEER. Pantries everywhere need an extra set of hands to answer mail, drive a truck, serve food, clean up at closing time, send press releases, hold food drives, stock and straighten shelves, deliver food to the home bound.
CLEAN OUT YOUR CLOSETS. Donate clothing, bedding, books, and other gently used items to places where the homeless will have access to them.
SHARE. Do you or someone you know have a garden? Donate the excess to a homeless friendly pantry in your area. When your garden tomatoes get to be too plentiful, there are those in your area who need the food.
PUSH THE ENVELOPE. Contact elected officials about homeless issues in your area. Encourage them to make ending homelessness important in your community.
EDUCATE YOURSELF. Returning veterans have special needs. For one thing, they begin separation from the military homeless.
FIND A JOB. Encourage your church or community to hire a homeless person. Many homeless want to work, have skills, but have trouble finding regular employment.
DO YOU HAVE A SKILL TO SHARE? Contact a local shelter and offer to give classes.
For a time, one of our most trusted volunteer/shoppers was homeless. His partner, Nancy, died and her children didn’t want him in the house they had lived in together for many years. He fought her children for a year with a lawyer, made several trips to court, the whole enchilada.
He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. He eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
IF YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON, YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Please share it with your preferred social media network.
BOOK UPDATE: The new hunger book is going to be out soon. The publisher assures me that we’re going to see the book within a month! Hurrah!
Thanks again
Thurman
Do you ever…? 10 questions to ask hungry friends, relatives, neighbors.
Do you ever run out of $$$ to buy the food to make a meal?
Do you ever eat less food than you need because you ran out of $$$ to buy the food?
Do you ever eat less food than you need because you can’t get the food?
Do you ever skip meals because you don’t have $$$ for food?
Do you ever skip meals because you can’t get the food?
Do you ever do without fresh/frozen fruits and vegetables because you don’t have $$$ to purchase these products?
Do you ever go to bed hungry?
Do you ever skip meals so that your children will have enough to eat?
Do your children ever eat less than they need because you don’t have enough to eat?
Do your children ever go to bed hungry?
Each week at the pantry, people line up to file through the tiny room in the shed. Most of them come weekly…as they should. That’s how they get the most food for the time invested. They get a 3-day supply of food which must last a week.
They hold their heads high, chat with neighbors in the line, put on the best face possible. I see them week after week, trying to get food they need at the pantry. I cannot help but have questions. I need to shift the focus from general to specific, nothing more. To me, each person is individual. Each one has unique needs.
As an agency of the Food Bank of Northeastern New York and the Hudson Valley, the volunteers of the Reservoir Food Pantry are trained to feed the hungry a 3-day supply of food to include fresh fruits and vegetables, proteins, whole wheat breads, dairy products. We are extremely proud of the quality of food which we serve to our shoppers.
This 3-day-supply of food includes food for three meals on each of the three days. Each meal needs to offer 3 of the 5 food groups.
We get this food from the Food Bank. Grocers, food manufacturers, farmers generously donate it. For the most part, it’s diverted from the landfill.
In spite of the landfill diversion, the quality of this food is excellent. Much of it, especially the fresh fruits and vegetables, is organic. It is food that all of us who volunteer at the Reservoir Food Pantry are proud to offer.
We serve this food to:
Seniors whose social security is not enough to buy the food they need to eat.
Families whose children need enough to eat so they can learn at school.
Seriously ill people whose income is focused on paying medical bills with no $$$ left for food.
Homeless people with no kitchens.
People living in food deserts who lack transportation to get to a first line grocery store/super market.
When I see these people each week, I cannot help but see that the numbers grow weekly. I am always confronted with one final question:
Why, in our United States of America in the 21st century, are over 49,000,000 people not getting enough to eat?
http://www.reservoirfoodpantry.org
http://www.FoodBankofHudsonValley.org
Thank you for reading this blog/book.
Please refer this article to your preferred social media network.
Please leave a comment.
Don’t forget to join the email list.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
food pantry blog – Father Nicholas
“Praise be to God.” – Father Nicholas
I first heard about Father Nicholas when a volunteer from St. John’s Roman Catholic Catholic Church asked me, almost in a whisper, if we had any extra food for some priests. Through the grapevine, I heard Heidi Motzkin knew some people (priests?) needing food.
HMMM. Then I heard another story about a group of priests needing food. Things were kind of quiet for a week or two. I didn’t act very fast because, in this business, it really takes a shout to get my attention. Anyway, I kept hearing little whispers so I got really curious. Who are these guys? Where are they? Do we know them?
So, Peggy Johnson, our Take Out Department manager at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry, and I got in the car and off we went! Out on Coldbrook Road in Bearsville is a very special place – The Holy Ascension Monastery. We drove out there and were greeted by a tall thin man with a full beard and pony tail, wearing a black cassock, a tall black hat, and black combat boots.
The story went that the monastery had, for a long time, housed three monks. Then, one day, several monks in the Boston area loaded a U-Haul truck and drove to Bearsville. Several other monks boarded a bus in Boston and rode to Woodstock. They increased the population at the monastery to twenty. The monastery needed extra people because they’re building a large, beautiful Church building on the grounds. I went to their website and saw what a beautiful building it is going to be.
In the confusion of the expansion, everything had been taken care of except, of course, the extra food needed for these priest/construction workers and volunteers.
Food? You need food? Peggy was delighted, excited, enthusiastic. She was on this job right away. A duck on a June bug had nothing on Peggy. Within days (hours?) the Holy Ascension Monastery staff had food. Peggy learned about their dietary considerations, as well as the number of people needing food.
Like a Supply Sergeant in a Mash unit, Peggy learned that the food bank had #10 cans of food. Nothing would do until our pantry storeroom had a whole shelf filled with them for Father Nicholas.
Fresh produce? Father Nicholas came by each week and got all the produce he needed.
Well, it wasn’t long until Father Nicholas and the Holy Ascension Monastery had their food needs straightened out and no longer needed Good Neighbor Food Pantry food. So, as smoothly as greasing a cake pan, Father Nicholas and his fellow monks became part of the volunteer pantry crew. He delivered food to homebound households every week. He brought yogurt to our pantry weekly.
And, as if that weren’t enough, Father Nicholas and the Holy Ascension Monastery became a food pantry for the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley serving food to anyone dropping by: pilgrims, homeless people, hungry people living in the area. The Holy Ascension Monastery is open seven days per week. People are allowed to take what they need and return as often as they need.
And, of course, while all this was happening, every one of us fell in love with the monks. Never in a million years would any of us have met these gorgeous men of God if it hadn’t been for the pantry.
The face of God is everywhere. All you have to do is work at a pantry, open your eyes, and look around.
Is that cool or what?
Food Pantry Blog – 9 Things You Can Do To Help the Homeless In Your Area
“People are living in tents. They’re living in cars. They’re living in the woods.” – Ginger Segal
Be a friend to Mother Earth by donating instead of dumping food, growing fresh produce and donating it to your local food pantry, donating clean egg cartons and reusable shopping bags pantry volunteers to share with shoppers.
Donate food to a homeless friendly pantry in your area. A homeless friendly pantry doesn’t discriminate against homeless shoppers by demanding identification with addresses. After all, homeless people don’t have an address and cannot shop in those pantries requiring detailed identification.
Donate food to a pantry in your area that distributes food the homeless can eat. Homeless people carry their kitchens in their pockets so a lot of food which we take for granted and use is just not useful for the homeless person. Homeless people need peanut butter and crackers, cereal in small packages, fruits and vegetables to be eaten raw: carrot sticks, strawberries, blueberries, celery sticks, etc. Milk in small containers is useful.
Give a little throughout the year by regularly donating to the pantry in your area which is most homeless friendly.
Volunteer at a homeless friendly pantry or soup kitchen.
Communicate with Persons of Influence by contacting elected officials about homeless issues in your area and encouraging them to make ending homelessness a priority.
Get organized by cleaning out your food pantry and donating the healthy items to the food pantry. Donate clothing and bedding in good condition to places where you feel the homeless will have access to some of the items.
Understand that returning vets have special needs and they often begin their separation from the military homeless.
Know that people being released from prison often are homeless. They no longer have contact with their community. They have no job. They have no place to go.
Help set up a pocket pantry in a church, synagogue, or school.
Peace and food for all.
Please share this article with your favorite social network.
Thurman Greco
Meet a Special Woodstock Resident
In the last post, I introduced you to Fancy Pants.
After Fancy Pants explained about his kitchen being in his shirt pocket, we tried to keep individual serving cups of applesauce, jars of peanut butter, boxes of crackers, individual serving cans of food with pop top lids, cereal bars, etc. The HPNAP people made sure we had access to fresh fruits and vegetables that can be eaten raw such as apples, blueberries, apricots, carrots, celery, bell peppers, strawberries.
Some of these homeless shoppers were shy about their situation and didn’t want the world at large to know about their lifestyle. Unsuspecting congregational volunteers in the pantry often urged the homeless shoppers to select food which they couldn’t prepare. Rather than reveal their living situation to the volunteers, the homeless people would take the food.
Occasionally, we found it on the ground outside the pantry at the end of the day. Other times, they took the food to friends with kitchens.
I finally made the decision that our volunteers in the pantry room needed to be a permanent team of people who would know the shoppers more intimately than someone who just showed up once or twice every year or two. This was a real turn off to some of the congregational volunteers and the congregations themselves and I was criticized throughout the community for it. However, I felt it was necessary for the dignity of the shoppers. This was just one more in a long line of decisions that made me no friends in the community. However, the volunteers who worked in the pantry on a daily basis understood.
Not all homeless people shopped at the pantry weekly like Fancy Pants. Arlen came to our pantry periodically when he was in town. Arlen was a very well educated gray haired gentleman with a poly tail.
“Can I volunteer at your pantry tomorrow? I know about food and can help you” Arlen asked politely one summer day as he visited our pantry for the first time.
We’ll learn more about Arlen in the next post. Please join in.
Thanks for reading this blogged book.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
The Homeless Shopper – Part 1: How Do You Cook Without a Kitchen?
THE HOMELESS SHOPPER
“Homeless is not a category of people. It’s just a situation that happens. It can happen to anyone.” – Salvador Altamirano-Segura
This post is the first of 8 focusing on homelessness.
Woodstock has more than its share of homeless people. One reason, I feel, is the community has a way of respecting or not respecting a person regardless of whether or not a roof is involved. Some of my absolute favorite shoppers were homeless shoppers who visited the pantry weekly.
One of the Good Neighbor Food Pantry’s regular homeless shoppers came into the pantry one day during a lull and taught me the rules of feeding the homeless. I suppose he was tired of coming to the pantry and not finding enough food to take away with him because Fancy Pants visited the pantry weekly and depended on what he found in this small room for his food. He was a very upbeat guy who saw as much positive in life as he could in spite of the fact that he spent the nights of his life on the floor of the bathroom in Town Hall. The place had no heat so he definitely was cold in the winter. However, even with the cold, hard floor, he was protected from the rain, snow, sleet.
His girlfriend came to the pantry with him each week. They made a date of it. He really loved her. This beautiful woman had a multiple personality disorder and was a different person with each pantry visit. And, of course, that was exactly what Fancy Pants loved about her.
Fancy Pants kept himself well hidden behind a lot of facial hair and baggy clothing. It was definitely hard to tell what he looked like underneath all the costumery. However, try as he might, he simply could not hide his intelligence, his outgoing attitude toward the world he lived in, and his love of life in general.
“The dietary needs of the homeless are different from those of people in all other categori
