Combat Hunger in Our Midst: Listen to your conscience
Posted 01/22/09
Combat hunger in our midst: Listen to your conscience
Kitty Schaller * published January 22, 2009 12:15 am
I am grateful to live in the most giving of communities. Repeatedly, people have responded to MANNA’s pleas for help, giving food and funds powerfully and quickly. There are no words to capture our level of gratitude and our sense of how caring and supportive folks in WNC are when it comes to helping neighbors in need. To everyone who has reached out to help by holding a food drive, by writing a generous check or who have donated food, we thank you.
The holidays are past, and we have put away our celebrative decor and dishes. Many of us have enjoyed the merriment of times spent with your loved ones. Thanks to you, through MANNA and our member organizations, thousands of our neighbors who face hunger enjoyed food and fellowship this holiday season. I wish I could tell you that we have closed the hunger gap, that the difference between the food supply and the incredible need in our mountains has been filled. However, our facts tell us a different story – one of continuing and even desperate hunger.
Real-life stories
Hunger has many faces and many circumstances.
The face is one WNC county where 33 percent of children are living in poverty but where a tax base is too high to qualify for federal anti-hunger programs in schools.
The face of hunger surely is Eileen, who recently incurred moving costs and higher rent, forcing her to grapple with not purchasing medication or food because of her situation.
The face of hunger includes Anna and her husband, 60 and 66 respectively, who are both on disability and receive Social Security checks. They are raising two teenage grandchildren and have difficulty meeting all the monthly expenses on their fixed income.
Will you join us in making “the end of hunger” a matter of national priority and pride? Hunger is not inevitable. We have the power to end hunger, if we will but arouse the political will to do it.
What you can do
To begin, help MANNA and our sister Feeding America food banks make anti-hunger initiatives an important part of the economic stimulus package being considered by Congress. You can effect that change.
Write to Congressman Shuler and Sens. Hagan and Burr.
Ask them to raise the benefit level for food stamp recipients. Currently, benefits amount to about $1 per meal. We can do better especially in these times.
Put money into the federal food program, TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) that stocks the shelves of food banks.
Let’s do it now. Leading financial analysts and Nobel Prize economists advocate for these very same increases, providing ample evidence of the broad economic benefits that these initiatives provide. For instance, for every $1 spent increasing food stamp benefits, $1.73 in economic activity is produced. Local communities immediately reap the benefits of federal dollars being spent at local retailers.
MANNA FoodBank gathers food from the food industry (traditionally 70 percent), state and federal governments and community donations. From our warehouses in Asheville and Franklin, we provide food for 331 agencies across WNC. About half of them are emergency food providers, food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens. Without help in stocking MANNA’s shelves, some of these distribution organizations will not survive.
Economic benefits
The policy-making measures I am suggesting will directly benefit folks who need our help, but more, they will contribute to resurgence in our local economies. Low income people use Food and Nutrition Services benefits (FNS – previously food stamps) to do their grocery shopping in our local stores. It’s not only the enormous banking and manufacturing industries that need help, it’s the low-income people, too.
At some level, we all know the truth: All of us need to eat every day, and we need good nutritious food to ward off illness and disease. Every day. The need for food continues into 2009, and at MANNA, we are working on new strategies to access and distribute food as efficiently and economically as possible. We also plan to promote a habit of giving in our communities – a habit that will cause each of us to donate food or money week to week, month to month, all year long until children and our working poor are food-secure. Will you join us?
The time to act is now. Write that letter to our legislators and continue to reach out with yor: gifts of time and money. Lend a hand up to others in our midst who cannot stretch their dollars any further. You, quite literally, will save lives.
Kitty Schaller is the executive director of MANNA FoodBank in East Asheville.
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