December 28, 2011

Teen’s ‘gift’ fights hunger

By: Helena Olviero

Peachtree City Christian Church volunteer Tess Peterson (left) and teenager Alexis Dillard check food lists as they prepare to fill backpacks with food for children in need of weekend meals. Photo: Hyosub Shin hshin@ajc.com

Every Wednesday night, Alexis Dillard loads up backpacks with spaghetti and tortillas, fruit cups and granola bars, rice and beans.

Before she heads home to finish her homework, Alexis, a 17-year-old high school senior in Peachtree City, makes sure the team of volunteers has filled 90 backpacks with a weekend’s worth of food for children.

Last year, Alexis, an AJC Holiday Hero, jumped at the chance to join forces with her mentor, Natalie Hynson, to start a backpack ministry after hearing about children in her community not having enough food over the weekends. They named their charity, Joshua’s Gift.

Each week, dozens of volunteers buy and collect food and meet at Peachtree City Christian Church in Peachtree City (where Alexis’ father is the head minister) to prepare the backpacks. Joshua’s Gift raises enough money to purchase about $800 worth of food every week. Volunteers also drop off the backpacks at three elementary schools in Fayette County. (They use backpacks so the children can take the food assistance home without drawing attention to the charity.)

Alexis and Hynson teamed up after Hynson observed a boy causing trouble at Oak Grove Elementary School in Fayette County, where Hynson volunteers and one of her children attends school.

A teacher asked the boy what was wrong. The child said he was hungry. The teacher explained snack time was in a few minutes.

“And then I heard the boy say, ‘No, I am hungry. Really hungry,’ and it just hit me. I came back to my office and cried,” said Hynson, who runs the preschool ministry at Peachtree City Christian Church. “The child in a classroom next to my daughter does not have enough to eat. I just thought this is crazy.”

At first, she let it go. But after a couple of months, she was struck by an overwhelming urge to do something. She immediately turned to Alexis.

Hynson knew Alexis was full of energy and shared her passion for helping children. Alexis often volunteered at the church preschool. She wanted to be a teacher for children with special needs.

The two researched childhood hunger together and discovered it’s not uncommon for children on free and reduced lunches in public schools to go hungry on the weekends. They stumbled upon troubling statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — about 15 percent of U.S. households lack resources to provide enough food for everybody. The nonprofit Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks in the country, estimates one in five children is at risk for hunger.

Alexis and Hynson tapped into their church community for help. Alexis recently helped organize and run a “breakfast with Santa” fundraiser at the church to raise money.

Alexis said running the charity is a lot to juggle, but she’s never wavered in her commitment.

“We just felt like this was something we could do and make a difference,” Alexis said.

Alexis has always been concerned for children, according to her father, George Dillard.

In elementary school, she was always paired with an autistic boy. She connected with the child.

“In third grade, the child had this spell in which he would get very upset and crawl under his desk,” Dillard said. “Alexis would crawl under there with him and not say a word. She would just be with him until he calmed down.”

Because the backpacks are dropped off at the schools, Alexis and Hynson rarely have any contact with the recipients.

But they recently received a letter from a mother who said her husband had been unemployed for months and the food helped her nourish her children during their recent hardship. Hynson drops off a few of the backpacks at homes receiving multiple backpacks and whose children can’t lug all of them on the bus.

Recently, Hynson was running a little late and Alexis went along. When they got to the family’s home, the children’s faces lit up.

“They said, ‘Oh, it’s the nice lady that brings us food,’ ” Alexis recalled. “They said, ‘We love you so much.’ It’s moments like that that make it all worth it.”

November 14, 2011

More than 30,000 Canadian students seek food bank support every month: Report

By: Briana Hill

A food bank provided by Best Buy. Photo by Best Buy Canada

OTTAWA (CUP) — HungerCount, an annual study of food banks and food programs in Canada, found that in 2011, an average of 851,000 individuals were assisted by food banks each month—and four per cent of them were post-secondary students.

“Four per cent means that there [are more than] 34,000 students every month that are going to a food bank for help,” said Food Banks Canada executive director Katharine Schmidt. “It’s a group of people in this country that is important to us. Educating our young people and preparing people for their futures is important, so to know that we’ve got about 34,000 Canadians who are walking into or getting help from a food bank each and every month, who are post-secondary students, I think is a large number.”

Since 2008, overall food bank use in Canada has increased by 26 per cent. “The reality is that someone using a food bank could be your neighbor, it could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be somebody you sat next to on the bus on the way to school—really, it could be just about anyone,” suggested Schmidt.

“The reason people end up at food banks is because their income is not high enough to cover the cost of basic needs.”

Two per cent of those receiving assistance from food banks cite student loans or scholarships as their primary source of income.

The cost of housing, job quality and accessibility to employment insurance are all barriers students face, according to Schmidt.

Food bank use has increased on campuses as well. According to numbers from the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, the number of people using their food bank has increased from 259 in 2007 to 3,534 in 2011.

“It’s amazing because ten to fifteen years ago, there weren’t campus food banks, and I think the majority of campuses now have food banks,” observed Schmidt. “It’s interesting how they’re helping to service those that need help with some really creative ways to do it so that there isn’t a stigma—and it allows students to get some help with a lot of dignity.” Beyond being a student, there is no set of eligibility criteria to access the SFUO food bank service.

“We ask that in order for students to have access to the food bank that they produce a student number—it’s really simple. We don’t ask for a lot of details or a lot of specifications, just that they can prove that they’re a student here, [or] that they’re an employee,” explained Chris Hynes, SFUO food bank employee.

Hynes and his coworkers are currently collecting information about who accesses the food bank service on their campus. They have found that students with dependents are more likely to be regular clients.

Fundamentally, food bank services exist to provide help to those in need. Both Schmidt and Hynes invited any students who need assistance to seek it out.

“If you’re struggling and you need it, make the phone call, send the email depending on your food bank, and just get some help, because it’s important—no one’s going to judge you and it will make a difference for you,” encouraged Schmidt.

“Students shouldn’t have to choose between paying tuition, paying rent, and buying food,” said Hynes.To find a food bank near you, visit:

www.foodbankscanada.ca

November 20, 2011

America’s new poor

(CBS News)

Family at the food bank.

While most of us are already looking forward to our Thanksgiving feast, one in six Americans isn’t sure where their next meal will come from. And as Mark Strassmann tells us . . . we’re finding the hungry in some unexpected places:

In Forsyth County’s rolling subdivisions near Atlanta, Easy Street seems to run forever. What recession? The average household here earns $88,000 – the highest in Georgia, 13th highest in America.

But for more families here, prosperity is a pretense. The job’s lost, the savings are gone, and the big house is either in foreclosure or on its way. And just keeping food on the table is a struggle.

So Forsyth’s newly-needy file into local food banks.

Yesterday’s GIVERS have become today’s TAKERS.

“People lost their jobs and went from great incomes to no incomes,” said Sandy Beaver, Sandy Beaver leads The Place, Forsyth County’s biggest non-profit center for social services. She calls those who visit The Place “the new poor.”

The Place’s main mission: Feed the hungry.

“Who are the new poor in this county?” asked Strassmann.

“The new poor could be you, me, your neighbor, your church member, somebody who has been affected by the economy,” she said. “Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors. And they’ll say, ‘I never thought I’d have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.’”

“People who two, three four years ago, the hunger would have been unimaginable?” asked Strassmann.

People like these married retirees in their 70s, too embarrassed to appear on camera. They said they could not feed themselves snow without help.

They retired comfortably in their early 50s. But now, after bad investments, a ruined portfolio, and costly medical issues, they qualify for food stamps – and could lose the house.

“Taking the food was really tough,” the woman said. “The hard part was, we used to give it, and now I’m taking it back, you know?” she said, crying.

Nearly 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps, a record level, and a jump of about two-thirds since 2007.

One in SIX Americans – 49 million people – say they have trouble putting food on the table.

At Forsyth County’s Lambert High, eight percent of kids now get free lunch, double the number three years ago.

Gladys Sasso-Alvarez directs the district’s help for needy students: “Sometimes they feel embarrassed that they are getting free breakfast and lunch. They think no one will know about it. But it was something deep inside of them, you know – they feel it is an embarrassment to eat for free.”

Read more: America’s new poor

November 30, 2011

Food bank usage increasing locally and across Canada

By: Rachel Punch

A report released this week showing a 26% increase in food bank usage across Canada since 2008 comes as no surprise to the Sault Ste. Marie Community Soup Kitchen executive director.

“It’s the same thing here,” said Calna McGoldrick.

The soup kitchen fed 18,414 meals to adults in 2008. Last year, that number was up to 20,753.

The HungerCount 2011 survey — released on Tuesday by Food Banks Canada, a national charitable organization — shows an increase in food bank usage of 26% between 2008 and 2011. It shows that in a typical month, Canada’s food banks are providing food to about 851,000 people and more than 322,000 of those helped are children. The study involved more than 4,100 food assistance programs.

In addition to the adult meal program, the Sault soup kitchen acts as a food bank for other agencies that need help. For example, the kitchen has provided food to the Children’s Aid Society for their clients as well as to food banks in Garden River and on St. Joseph Island.

“At one point, we used to just let people (from the agencies) go downstairs and take what they needed. We had to stop doing that and just give them a bag of food and say ‘this is what we have,’ ” McGoldrick said.

The soup kitchen provides a healthy snack program for children. Those numbers have been fairly stable over the last few years, she said.

The Salvation Army Community & Family Services operates a food bank for individuals in the community.

“We’ve seen an increase … I don’t know what the percentage would be, but the usage has definitely gone up,” said Mildred Brodie, family services worker at the Salvation Army.

“Last month was very, very busy. We are already starting off this month very busy, too,” Brodie said. “We haven’t even got the cold weather yet.”

The HungerCount provides recommendations to federal and provincial governments to reduce the number of people who need help from food banks. They include:

* Investing in affordable housing so low-income Canadians don’t have to decide between paying the rent and feeding their families;

* Improving employment insurance to better support older workers who have lost jobs;

* Jump-start innovative partnerships and government-led programs that help ensure Canadian jobs are well-paying jobs.

The lack of affordable housing is one of the biggest issues McGoldrick said her clients face.

“There are people paying $400 a month living in a room above different pubs in town. It’s terrible,” McGoldrick said.

“I heard of one situation that people are living in where the toilet broke and the landlord gave them a garbage can to pee in.

“People are paying way too much and living in really substandard places.”

Brodie agreed that higher housing costs are one of the biggest issues among users of the Salvation Army food bank.

“The rent is higher,” she said. “If you have PUC and you have to pay that on top, that’s a lot of money for some of them.”

The Soup Kitchen Community Centre is holding its third Great Soup Kitchen Sleepover on Nov. 11. So far, close to 200 people have signed up to spend a night sleeping in a cardboard box outside the James Street facility.

rpunch@saultstar.com

December 08, 2011

Urban aboriginals also face poverty, illness and hunger

By: The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — A new database suggests that 60 per cent of aboriginal people living in cities are likely suffering high rates of illness, poverty, hunger and substandard housing.

Researchers say a survey of native people living in Hamilton, Ont., shows that the poverty that has raised alarm bells in remote reserves like Attawapiskat is pervasive in cities as well.

The database shows 80 per cent of the 790 Hamilton aboriginals in the survey earn less than $20,000 a year and 70 per cent live in the poorest neighbourhoods — compared with 25 per cent of the total population.

They move frequently — a sign of transience and housing instability.

And they deal with chronic disease and disability.

They are far more likely to have diabetes, visit emergency rooms, live in crowded conditions or have children with asthma.

“We all continue to be shocked by the living conditions in places like Attawapiskat, but it’s important to realize this is also happening right here in our backyards,” says Dr. Janet Smylie of the Centre for Research and Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

The survey results suggest that other recent studies of urban First Nations, such as the census, have underestimated the extent of poverty and its related issues, she said in an interview.

“There is a great health inequity here,” she said. “First Nations people have higher health problems, yet access to services and care is poorer.”

She said the database was set up to fill in gaps about urban aboriginal populations. About 13 per cent of the respondents were homeless and many others were transient, meaning they are likely to be missed by conventional surveys.

Much of the discussion about poverty in the northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat has focused on the remoteness of the reserve. It’s a fly-in community hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town.

But Smylie says poverty, lack of healthy food, overcrowding, lack of access to regular health care and mental illness make for persistent problems in both remote and urban areas.

December 08, 2011

Local daycare children go shopping for food bank

By: Kathy Yanchus

They were shopping for “food for poor people” and “groceries that don’t go in the fridge.”

So said three-year-old Elexa, decked out in a handknit pink Toronto Maple Leafs sweater, tiny braids tucked under a matching headband and little fingers grasping the side of a grocery cart.

They moved down the aisle, Elexa and her shopping partner, two-year-old Paige, stopping every few feet to toss in a box of crackers or granola bars as helper Heather gently guided the cart.

“How about some juice boxes?” suggested Heather.

“Whoa, this is heavy,” said Elexa, as she carried the juice boxes to the buggy.

Then it was time for a hug and she stretched her arms around Paige.

Elsewhere in the grocery store Saturday, 22 other similarly dressed boys and girls, discernable in blue and pink Leafs sweaters, were scouring the aisles searching for bargains and items fit for the food bank shelves.

“This is the most exciting day. My husband and I just love kids,” said longtime daycare provider Denise Mule, leading her sixth festive trek to Metro as a way of combining her birthday and Christmas celebrations and involving her young charges in the spirit of giving.

“Wow 88 cents. Can we get this can?” asked six-year-old Jesse, summoning Denise’s husband Peter to check out his bargain find.

“Soups are good,” encouraged mom Janet Cheevers to her group of shoppers. “We  can get rice too.”

“It’s pretty awesome,” said 11-year-old helper Keith, in describing what the shopping excursion meant to him.

Less than an hour later, eight carts heaving with rice, pasta, tomato sauce, peanut butter and diapers lined up at the cash.

In quick and efficient fashion, parents unloaded the groceries, packed them into reusable bags and loaded them into the convoy of vans lined up in the parking lot.

Meanwhile the kids plunked down on the floor, passed around cookies and sang Christmas carols.

Listening to the boisterous voices emanating from the pharmacy area and moving carts up the checkout queue, Christine Will said she had joked that it would be easier to give money to the food bank.

“But then the kids don’t get the experience,” added Will, whose three children were all cared for by Denise and return every year to participate.

As the merry bunch exited Metro hand-in-hand, they regaled assistant store manager Ron Alexander with a hearty rendition of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’

Once the convoy arrived at the Mules’ festively-decorated King Street home, the kids awaited the arrival of the firetrucks, which were loaded up with the groceries and delivered to the foodbank.

“If the firetrucks are busy, we just walk around the block singing Christmas carols,” said Denise.

Then it’s inside for a visit from Santa. Denise not only provides breakfast for the children before the trip to Metro, but all the treats and presents, and every year knits theme sweaters for all those participating.

The Mules match the kids’ contributions toward the groceries, raised by doing chores throughout the year, usually totaling $2,000.

“They do chores like drying dishes, making their bed, everybody is in on it,” said Denise.

“They all come back every year. They’re all family, all sisters and brothers. That’s how we run it.”

Commented Katie Best, whose four-year-old son Austin is currently one of Denise’s charges, “It’s amazing to see all of the kids participate in this and know they are really helping those less fortunate than us.”

December 09, 2011

Land of the free, home of the hungry

Nowhere is the chasm between America’s political class and its working poor more vast than in the demand to cut food stamps

By: Gary Younge

On Monday afternoon this week, Rachelle Grimmer went into a Department of Health and Human Services in Texas with her two children, Timothy, aged 10, and Ramie, aged 12, and asked for a new case worker who could assist her application for food stamps. She had first applied in July but had been told she hadn’t provided enough information and, by most accounts, had been struggling to get by and get help since she moved from Ohio.

She was taken to a small room, where she pulled a gun, sparking a seven-hour standoff with police. Shortly before midnight, three shots were heard. Rachelle had shot both herself and her kids. Police rushed in to find the mother dead and Ramie and Timothy in critical condition. Earlier that morning, Ramie had posted a Facebook message, saying: “may die 2day”. She actually hung on until Wednesday. Timothy’s condition remains critical.

The tragic unravelling of this particular episode is hardly typical. But the desperation that underpins it is. For, in this period between Thanksgiving and Christmas (when many Americans are worrying about what overindulging will do to their waistline), a significant number is wracked with an entirely different concern: not having enough to eat.

This is no marginal group, no handful of unfortunates and ne’er-do-wells in a time of crisis. Indeed, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world,food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months – the highest level since the month Barack Obama was elected. Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare.

An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now. In Rockdale County, east of Atlanta, 63% of students now have subsidised food – up from 46% four years ago.

Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme. Catholic Charities recently revealed that requests for the working poor were up 80% over the second quarter, and up 59% for the middle class.

Similarly, Operation Homefront, a national organisation that feeds the families of military personnel, has seen demand for help double over the last two years. The Washington Post reported that in Fort Hood, Texas, military families stayed up after midnight to register for a free turkey online for Thanksgiving. The 450 birds were gone within an hour. Even as soldiers fight for empire abroad, their families struggle for food at home.

You would think this would be a national disgrace. The land of the free – and the home of the hungry. The sheer scale and intensity of the problem refutes any suggestions of the undeserving poor.

But want has become a term of political abuse, with Newt Gingrich launching his campaign earlier this year by branding Obama “the food stamp president” and continues to berate him as such. Indeed, behind the partisan posturing over deficit reduction, it is rarely noted that rather than impose taxes on millionaires, Republicans are eager to balance the budget on the stomachs of the hungry.

As editor of the Left Business Observer, Doug Henwood, points out in a recent blog posting, these benefits are not particularly generous. “The average [food stamp] recipient gets $134 a month in assistance, which works out to $4.40 a day. That’s 10% less than the US Department of Agriculture’s “thrifty” meal budget, and about half its “moderate” budget. For your average well-fed American, living on a daily ration of less than $5 for food prepared at home would be hard to imagine. But without SNAP benefits, 46 million people would be in a state of anguish rather than just scraping by.”

Yet, this is one area the Republicans are keen to target for cuts. They want to reduce spending on food stamps by around 20%, and in June,voted to slash a different health and nutrition scheme (WIC) for poor pregnant women and children by 10%, which would have denied assistance to around a quarter of a million people.

This will be the primary terrain on which the forthcoming elections will be fought: the needs and aspirations of the working poor. Not so much the destitute – America is always forgetting about them – but the working poor and those who fear descending among them. But for the Democrats to capitalise on these anxieties, they will have to shift the country’s sense of what it takes to be poor and convince them that government has a role in alleviating that condition before desperation kicks in.

You’d think that would be straightforward. But illusions of meritocracy, equal opportunity, class fluidity and social mobility die hard. This a country where, according to a Pew survey in 2008, 91% believe they are either middle-class, upper middle-class or lower middle-class, and a Gallup poll in 2005 showed that while only 2% of Americans described themselves as “rich”, 31% thought it very likely or somewhat likely they would “ever be rich”. Sooner or later, though, reality tends to intrude.

As thousands of people gathered at New Orleans convention centre following Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown, the hapless head of the disaster relief agency, Fema, was asked why he was not tending to them with shelter and water.

“We’re seeing people that we didn’t know exist,” he said. This has been the official policy of America’s political class for some time. “This is a special interest group that not many people talk about because they don’t have the wealth to lift a candidate to be president of the United States,” explained D Jermaine Husser, the former executive director of South Carolina’s Low Country Food Bank.

But there is only so long you can pretend that such a large group of people doesn’t exist, and as the poverty rates grow, more and more people who are likely to vote become ensnared in it. Gallup’s Basic Access Index, which tracks access to basic needs like food, shelter and healthcare or medicines, is at the lowest it’s been since its inception in January 2008. A new measurement of poverty by the Census Bureau, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses that do not intrude on the official poverty count, found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” Trudi Renwick, the bureau’s head poverty statistician, told the New York Times recently. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

Poverty may be relative but hunger is absolute. The third world is alive and struggling in the heart of the first. No one can deny it exists. And those who claim they can’t see it, either refuse to see it for what it is or simply do not want to look.

November 16, 2009

1 in 6 Americans goes hungry

Government report shows 15% of Americans had trouble putting food on the table — a record high.

By: David Goldman

U.S. assistance to food banks rose in 2009 with Recovery Act funding, after a record number of Americans struggled to put food on the table in 2008, a new report found. Photo: John R. Coughlin

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The number of Americans that have trouble putting food on the table shot up last year in an unprecedented spike to a record 17 million households, the government reported on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture report, which has been released annually since 1995, said the number of Americans that were hungry rose to 14.6%. In 2007, 13 million households or 11.1% of Americans had trouble getting enough food.

The one-year jump is all the more significant, given the number of hungry Americans had never been higher than 11.9% since these surveys began.

Of the near-15% of the nation that couldn’t secure enough food last year, the USDA said one-third of them had “very low food security,” meaning they reduced the amount that they ate or disrupted their eating patterns during the year. That group made up 5.7% of all U.S. households, which was also a record high.

More than 500,000 households that scaled back the amount that they ate were households with children, making up 1.3% of all U.S. homes with children.

The USDA said the main cause of hunger and food insecurity in the country is poverty.

Obama’s call to action. President Obama called the report “unsettling,” and said more needs to be done.

“My Administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger,” Obama said in a statement. “The first task is to restore job growth, which will help relieve the economic pressures that make it difficult for parents to put a square meal on the table each day. But we are also taking targeted steps to prevent Americans from experiencing hunger.”

Obama urged Congress to pass a “strong” child nutrition bill to help ensure that American children don’t go hungry.

To combat the nation’s rapidly growing hunger problem, the Recovery Act allocated $20 billion to the nation’s food stamp program, and hundreds of millions of dollars to food banks and school lunch programs.

One recipient of stimulus funds was the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, which was allocated an additional $150 million from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

The 28-year old program, known as TEFAP, sends shipments of federally purchased food to states, which in turn gets the food in the hands of large food banks. The food banks then allocate the food to soup kitchens and pantries that serve people in need. The $150 million for TEFAP provided by stimulus about doubled the amount of money already allotted to the program this year.

Feeding America, a network of more than 200 food banks that advocates in Washington for food assistance programs, said its member food banks reported a 30% increase in the number of people seeking assistance earlier this year, and 72% of food banks had been unable to adequately meet demand before the stimulus bill was enacted.

November 22, 2011

Breakfast for Learning fuels Vancouver’s hungry students

‘Thank you for breakfast — my tummy was so hungry’

By: Janet Steffenhagen

Lisa Werring of Breakfast for Learning helps prepare breakfast, November 22nd, for the students at Vancouver's Grandview Elementary school. The school is part of the Breakfast for Learning program. Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG

The lineup of children at Grandview elementary school began early Tuesday morning, as the first whiff of grilled cheese drifted through the gymnasium.

It was a day like any other, with several dozen students from kindergarten to Grade 7 watching hungrily as cafeteria worker Ignazia (Nancy) Boucher flipped sandwiches on the grill and set out a selection of yogurt, fruit and milk for breakfast.

Grandview is one of 11 inner-city schools in Vancouver that regularly serves meals to students to ensure they’re fed and ready to learn when they go to their classes. The schools are able to do so thanks to generous donations from individuals, companies and charitable organizations such as Breakfast for Learning.

A hot meal for these children at the start of the day is invaluable, said Grandview principal Gloria Raphael, adding that she couldn’t imagine how her school would manage if it didn’t have a breakfast program.

“Take a look — these kids are lining up because they haven’t had breakfast,” she said. “If we sent all of these children up to class and tried to teach them — when they haven’t eaten — it would be hard. This makes a huge difference.”

Grandview, with about 170 students, is fortunate to be one of five inner-city schools supported by CIBC Wood Gundy, Bentall branch, over many years. Investment adviser Jeff Watchorn said his branch has donated a total of about $1.5 million over 15 years to Grandview, Admiral Seymour, Britannia, Strathcona and Mount Pleasant elementary schools.

The money comes from a Canada-wide corporate commitment to children’s charities called Miracle Day. On that day, Dec. 7 this year, all revenue collected by Wood Gundy is donated to a charity, and at the Bentall branch, Watchorn and his colleagues chose school breakfast programs. That money is supplemented by donations from Boston Pizza.

“If we can’t support the children in need in our society, then what type of society do we have?” Watchorn said in an email after The Vancouver Sun published an appeal in late September from Seymour teacher Carrie Gelson for help for her students, who were coming to school with holes in their shoes and hunger in their bellies.

While there are many generous donors in Metro Vancouver, there are also growing needs. Breakfast for Learning, a national charity that provides funding for programs across the country, said the number of schools applying for money has been increasing steadily. This year, Breakfast for Learning is funding 249 schools in B.C. — including 71 in Metro Vancouver — which is 68 more than last year.

B.C. has had the worst child poverty rate in Canada for eight years.

“One thing the community really needs to know is that there are hungry children in every postal code,” said Lisa Werring, the coordinator and only paid employee with the B.C./Yukon branch. “It is not limited to high-needs, inner-city areas.

“There are, for example, new subdivisions with large homes and you would never imagine that the school in that community would have hungry kids … . But people often forget that a lot of those larger homes have two, three, even four basement suites and those children are not in the same economic demographic as the children upstairs.”

Part of Werring’s work is connecting those who want to help with those in need. “I’ve seen grown men cry when they visit a breakfast program and see these beaming little faces — full of scrambled eggs and toast — smiling up at them and saying ‘thank you for breakfast — my tummy was so hungry.’ People are astonished to see this need.”

The Vancouver Sun is also trying to help through its Adopt-a-School project. Please visit vansunkidsfund.ca/welcome to see an interactive map showing what kids need and how to get in touch with their Metro Vancouver schools. All donations to Adopt-a-School will be matched by The Vancouver Sun’s Children’s Fund. Contact coordinator Kathy Anderson at 604-605-2654 or by email at adoptaschool@vancouversun.com

November 23, 2011

Bringing Food from Farms to the Tables of the Needy

By: Olivia Katrandjian

After working for four decades in the corporate world, Gary Maxworthy became a retired volunteer at the San Francisco food bank. But Maxworthy decided he wanted to do more, and so he founded the Farm to Family program, which distributes millions of pounds of excess produce to needy people across California.

According to the USDA, in 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in “food-insecure households” and another 11.3 million adults lived in households with “very low food security.” And yet the country produces an excess of food. Maxworthy tried to solve this paradox by starting Farm to Family.

The organization began in 2000 by working with one grower and distributing half a million pounds of fruit to 10 food banks in northern California.

This year, the organization will distribute 115 million pounds of fresh produce not considered marketable (they have slight differences in size and shape, or are overproduced) that would otherwise be destroyed to over 40 food banks. Over 70 crops are collected and distributed to three million Californians in need.

This has allowed food banks to replace canned and dried food with fresh food.

“Nutrition is everything!” said Maxworthy, when asked what role nutrition plays in the program. “For most food banks in California, over 50 percent of everything they distribute is fresh fruits and vegetables with almost all produce coming from ‘Farm to Family.’ For some food banks, over 60 percent of their distributions are fresh produce.”

In addition to working in California, Farm to Family has begun working with food banks in Arizona and Nevada, and within the next few weeks, the organization will start distributing to Oklahoma and Louisiana on a weekly basis.

“In addition, over the next month we hope to start distributing to Utah, Colorado, Washington and Oregon through our partnership with Feeding America,” the nation’s largest not-for-profit organization that fights hunger. “During the summer we distributed two truckloads of plums every week to food banks throughout the US,” said Maxworthy.

The farm bureau estimates that in addition to higher gas prices and airfare this holiday season, the cost of the classic Thanksgiving dinner is up 13 percent.

With an increasing number of people not able to afford a turkey on Thanksgiving, the “Farm to Family” has started a dairy program to provide milk to families in need.

“This Thanksgiving we piloted a dairy program that distributed 12,000 half gallons of milk at no cost to families in need in the Fresno, Bakersfield, Tulare and Hanford areas of California,” said Maxworthy.

Maxworthy hopes to “increase access to Farm to Family produce for other states, increase availability of produce in California schools, and increase availability of hard-to-access, high-demand crops such as grapes and nuts.”