Director's Diary 8/20/10 Here’s to Valley Harvest! FBA partners with Mat-Su Valley farmers and growers through the Valley Harvest program. We count on these generous folks to help provide fresh, healthy, beautiful produce to our hungry neighbors. Last year, FBA received nearly 200,000 pounds of Alaska Grown produce through Valley Harvest. The rainy, gray weather has slowed down the produce this year, and we’ve been anxiously hoping that enough vegetables would sprout to allow the farmers to share with FBA. Today, to our great delight, we collected our first two truckloads of gorgeous produce, including lettuce and broccoli from our friends at Point Mackenzie. Our heartfelt thanks! 8/6/10 Anyone can end up in a situation in which they are hungry. This is simply the truth. National Public Radio ran a story on July 27 about hungry and homeless college students at UCLA that brought tears to my eyes. They told the story of Diego, a student at UCLA, the first in his family to attend college. Diego comes from a blue-collar, working class family and has always had a job to pay for his education. When he lost his job at Subway, he could no longer afford to pay rent. He relied on friends, the sofas in the UCLA library, and the showers at the Student Activities Center. He utilized a newly created food shelf down the hall from UCLA’s Community Programs Office. Diego is not on a street corner with a sign saying “Will work for food.” He is a determined young man who is utterly committed to getting an education. "Nothing is going to stop me," he says. "I'm going to reach my goals no matter what people say." Go, Diego, go! I’m glad that there is a food pantry there to help you; it makes me proud of the work I do every day. 7/23/10 The great African American educator Booker T. Washington wrote, “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." Mr. Washington’s wisdom came to me as I was reading a summary of the research on the impact of hunger on children. I was particularly struck by a 2003 study by Winicki and Jemison which tracked outcomes of kindergarteners from food insecure homes. This study found that these hungry kids entered school with lower math skills – and they also learned less math than their peers over the course of the year. So, due to inadequate nutrition, these young children started behind and fell even further behind through the school year. What significant obstacles to success these children will have to overcome! Happily, the research review also concluded that, in many cases, nutrition assistance – including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs, Food Stamps, and charitable food programs - can reverse the trend and allow hungry children to catch up to the peer group. 7/13/10 “Brochures don’t work.” I gave this message to Camp Fire USA Alaska Council this morning. The fabulous folks at Camp Fire are trying to figure out how to better connect their families to social services, including Food Stamps. I explained that FBA has had a Food Stamps Outreach Coordinator for nearly three years now, working to encourage potentially eligible families to apply for the Food Stamps Program. The Food Stamps Program is an absolutely wonderful resource for low income families, as it provides on average benefit of $168 per month per person – or $672 for an average family of four. This benefit comes in the form of a debit card that can be utilized at grocery stores. The application process for Food Stamps is complicated and rather daunting, however. And it is our experience that many clients need lots of help with the application process. This is why I told Camp Fire staff that brochures don’t work. However, Paul Watson, FBA’s Food Stamps Outreach Coordinator, is available to man a table at a parent’s night, answer phone calls, or make house calls. Paul can and will provide the one-on-one assistance and encouragement needed to help families access Food Stamps – and thus obtain reliable nutritional support for their families. 6/28/10 At FBA, we love our partners – the food pantries, soup kitchens and other organizations that serve hungry Alaskans directly. And occasionally we get to express our adoration directly – by hiring a former partner. Kylie Clark co-managed the Paddleboat Café in Goose Lake Park in Anchorage. Kylie and her family were one of the first to leap onto the concept of the Summer Food Service Program – free meals for kids while school is out – even though Paddleboat Café is a for-profit company. They arranged to provide free meals from 11 am to noon, before their regular food service began. We recently managed to lure Kylie to join the FBA team as the Child Nutrition Coordinator. In that position, Kylie will be responsible for overseeing our Summer Food sites; she will have many opportunities to share her hard-won wisdom managing a Summer Food site. Welcome aboard, Kylie! 6/15/10 FBA’s fiscal year ends June 30. For most organizations, fiscal year end is a time for paperwork. But at food banks, it is also time for year-end inventory, in which we count every box, bag, or pound of food in our warehouse. I personally lead FBA’s year-end inventory process. This is “partly because of your position but mostly because of who you are”, according to FBA Managing Director Merri Mike Adams. She knows I’m a hands-on, do-it-once-and-do-it-right kind of person. It is also true that, at FBA, year-end inventory is an all-staff event – and it is easier to manage an all-hands-on-deck situation if the captain is in charge. For the most part, I look forward to year-end inventory. I am eager to have a solid reason to spend much of week in our warehouse. I love FBA’s warehouse as it is the heart and soul of our mission. And I love getting the chance to spend some more time with the good folks who work in FBA’s warehouse, caring for our food and our partners every day. 6/3/10 I read in the Economist recently that the number of orphans in North Korea is increasing. Why? Their parents are dying of hunger and malnutrition. I closed my eyes and sent up thanks that hunger in Alaska results in misery and underachievement – but rarely death. Today, I learned today that a common, polite Chinese phrase of welcome and comfort is “Have you eaten today?” These two incidents reminded me that hunger is a cross-cultural yet profoundly isolating experience. Here are some multicultural perspectives on hunger, for your consideration: • A person who has food has many problems. A person who has no food has only one problem. – Chinese Proverb • To a man with an empty stomach, food is God. – Mahatma Gandhi • Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead. – St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople • Lord, to those who hunger, give bread. And to those who have bread, give the hunger for justice. – Latin American prayer • Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory. Hunger is felt only in the present. – Elie Wiesel • To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. – W.E. DuBois 5/29/10 Army. Navy. Air Force. Marines. Many of FBA’s staff are veterans of our armed services. Eddie was in the Navy in Vietnam and has since retired. Tomeka honorably served in the Air Force, as did Devin. Claudia’s father, husband and son were or are all in the military. This Memorial Day, I honor my colleagues. These men and women served our country and then came home to serve our community by feeding our hungry neighbors. They are true heroes in my eyes. 5/17/10 In our anti-hunger work, I regularly run across references to FDR’s concept of ‘freedom from want’ – meaning no person can truly be free until their basic needs are met. I got curious and went looking for the original speech, which inspired me so much that I’d like to share with you. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, in his State of the Union Address to the Congress in January 6, 1941: “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world. “That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.” 5/3/10 This is the time of Annual Fund at FBA, when we send out a mailing asking for the vital donations we count on to provide food to our hungry neighbors. One woman took the trouble to send a donation envelope back, empty but for the following message: “Parents should be responsible for feeding their children. If they can’t feed them, they shouldn’t have children.” I was taken aback by this critical, judgemental message, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’m a mother myself. I know how difficult it is to raise a child – how much work and care it involves. My partner and I thought carefully before having a child, and taking care of our son is our top priority. But what if one of us got sick? Or lost her job? What if we got in a car accident? Life happens. Circumstances change. I don’t think any child should be hungry. I don’t think any parent should suffer the torment of not being able to feed his or her children. I don’t care what circumstances or choices led them to the Mobile Food Pantry or food pantry or soup kitchen. I am so grateful that I personally, through my work at FBA, have the opportuntity to help these families get enough to eat. 4/19/10 Feeding America, the national network of food banks, held its annual conference in Austin recently. I always attend, because I learn so much from my food bank colleagues about how to end hunger in Alaska. At this meeting, I saw some pretty bleak statistics on the state of the economy. Several current projections show that the unemployment rate will not return to 2007 levels until 2019. Poverty levels are also up to 13.2% of the population nationally and are likely to stay high for the next decade. Most depressingly, child poverty rates were 19% in 2008; they are projected to be 24% in 2011 and gradually decrease, reaching 21% by 2019. All of this means that the recession has made more people poor and poor people even poorer. The food that FBA provides will be needed more than ever over the next decade. 4/5/10 I was in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada recently – with my 14-month old son and my partner, who was giving a seminar at the University of Victoria. We were strolling around the student union on the university campus when something caught my eye. An arrow, pointing down the stairs, read “Emergency Food Bank”. When most people think of hungry people, they think of a homeless man on a street corner with a sign. They don’t think of college students – young people struggling to feed themselves so they can stay in school and have a brighter future. I felt an instant connection with the UVic Emergency Food Bank – we are in the same ‘business’, after all, even though we are in different countries. Moreover, FBA is currently working on establishing a regular mobile food pantry at the University of Anchorage to help Alaskan students in a similar way. Oddly enough, through a ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ sort of association, FBA and Uvic Emergency Food Bank are also formally connected. FBA is a member of Feeding Amercia (the national food bank network), which is a member of the Global Food Banking Network. Another member of the Global Food Banking Network is the Canadian Association of Food Banks, to which the UVic Emergency Food Bank is connected. It is a small world, after all. 3/19/10 I was reminded again recently that food is about more than nutrition – food can also be about love. At the Mobile Food Pantry recently, an African-American mom and her young daughter were standing in line waiting for the food distribution to begin. The girl was dressed in a flowery pink dress and coat, but she wasn’t wearing mittens even though it was bitterly cold. She kept warm dancing and spinning around her mother, as if her mother was the sun. The distribution began, and this mother-daughter pair reached the tables covered with fruits, vegetables, yogurt and bread. The mother picked up a bag of red grapes and handed them to her daughter with a smile and a soft “Here you go, sweetie.” The daughter’s face glowed, and she hugged that bag of grapes to her chest, as if they were a Christmas present. She was so happy that she stopped her constant movement and stood entranced. The grapes, it seemed, were either a special favorite or a special treat. At that moment, for that girl, those grapes were not only food – they were a symbol that her mother and her community cherished her. What a wonderful, serendipitous gift Food Bank of Alaska, our partners, and our generous donors were able to provide that day! 3/5/10 I just wrote a letter to Alaska legislators in support of expansion of Denali KidCare, the government funded health system for low income kids and pregnant women. Why, you ask, does Food Bank of Alaska care? Because hunger and health care are inextricably linked. It should not surprise you to learn that people who are hungry are frail and frequently ill – if your body does not get good nutrition, you get sick. And if you are sick and you have no health care, then you will get sicker, and less able to work or learn at school, and ultimately more hungry. It is also true that hunger is an income issue – people are hungry because they don’t have enough money to buy food. These same folks likely do not have the money to buy health insurance or pay for medical care or medications. Consider these facts from the Hunger in America 2010 Alaska report: • 30% of food assistance clients have no health insurance • 58% of food assistance clients have unpaid medical bills • 35% of food assistance clients choose between paying for food and paying for health care or medication Providing health insurance to more Alaskan children would mean that fewer families face the agonizing choice between feeding their kids and taking them to the doctor. It would also help ensure that these kids receive preventative health care, giving them the best possible chance to break the cycle of poverty and succeed in life. 2/19/10 “So, what surprised you?” Feeding America (the national network of food banks) released Hunger in America 2010 recently. Food Bank of Alaska and the Alaska Food Coalition collaborated to conduct nearly 300 interviews with food assistance clients in Alaska so, in addition to the national study, there are Alaska and Anchorage reports as well. I have been talking about this new data a lot recently, and I have been frequently asked what surprised me about the data. Since hunger in Alaska is my area of expertise, I wasn’t expecting to be surprised…but I was. Here are some of the findings that caught me off guard: • Average annual household income is $15,180. I honestly did not believe that many households could exist on such a tiny income in Alaska, of all places. • 58% percent of clients have unpaid medical or hospital bills. I have been saying for years that one of the best ways to reduce the need for food assistance would be to fix our health care system – but I was taken aback by the depth of the problem. • 45% had to choose between paying for food and paying rent or mortgage. When we last conducted this survey in 2005, only a third reported making this difficult choice. • 38% of households are currently receiving Food Stamp benefits, although in 78% of households, at least one person had applied for SNAP benefits at some time. This tells me that Food Stamps are still dramatically underutilized, most likely due to the challenging application process. 2/5/10 Here’s a toast to School Breakfast! The Alaska Food Coalition, of which Food Bank of Alaska is a member, has been working for three years to expand the School Breakfast Program in Alaska. While theoretically every school in Alaska could offer federally subsidized breakfasts, the federal reimbursement is low enough to make this economically infeasible. The result is that 104 schools and 8 districts in Alaska do not offer breakfast at school. 15% of the students that qualify for free or reduced price school meals attend schools that do not offer a breakfast program -- that’s over 7,000 missed meals each day, over 1.2 million a year. Senator Wielechowski introduced SB213 into the Alaska Senate. This bill provides state funding to match the federal reimbursement for school breakfast, making it possible for more schools to offer breakfast. It is also provides a small match for school lunches, to help maintain lunch availability and quality. Senators McGuire, Ellis, Paskvan, Menard, and Thomas have stepped up to cosponsor this legislation. I, unsurprisingly, think no child should be hungry and every child should have the opportunity for a health breakfast. But in addition to my moral stance, there are also some very compelling rational reasons as well. School Breakfast: Improves Student Performance: Serving breakfast to kids at school significantly improves their cognitive or mental abilities, enabling them to be more alert, pay better attention, and perform better in reading and math. Increases School Attendance: Schools breakfast programs can lower absence and tardiness rates and improve standardized achievement test scores. Decreases School Violence: Research shows corresponding decrease in discipline problems directly related to participation in the breakfast program. Fights Obesity and Improves Nutrition: Adolescents who eat breakfast tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI); higher BMI's can indicate overweight and obesity 1/18/10 I admit to being a numbers person and a data freak. Nothing makes me happier than to see solid information on anti-hunger work. So when I attended a Food Pantry of Wasilla Board meeting recently, I was thrilled to receive a copy of their client statistics for federal fiscal year 2009 (October 2008 to September 2009). 2,700 families visited Food Pantry of Wasilla nearly 11,000 times in that year, or about 900 visits a month – wow! But here are some very interesting facts: • 68% of those families visited less than four times in that year. To me this means that most folks are only asking for food assistance when they really need it. Only 1% visit more than once a month. • 44% of the people in these families are children 18 or younger. This confirms what I already knew: children suffer most from hunger in Alaska. • On average, 11 families each month have a newly unemployed family member. Homeless folks on street corners are indeed hungry, but they make up a small percentage of our hungry neighbors. Food Pantry of Wasilla’s statistics paint a picture of the ‘average’ hungry Alaskan family – with an adult working or trying to work and with childen. 1/4/10 I wish you a Happy New Year! My family celebrated the New Year with an Irish tradition this year. My parents, my partner, our 11 month old son, and my 101 year old grandfather stood in the snow outside my parent’s house in Connecticut. I took a loaf of bread and beat it against the house, chanting: “May there be no hunger in this house, this community, this country or this world in the coming year.” 12/23/09 Tom and Jim were hitch-hiking, bags of food and toys at their feet. They had just left the Neighborhood GIFT program at Anchorage City Church and were making their way home. Don’t tell my mother, but I picked up Tom and Jim and drove them several miles closer to their home. 68-year-old Jim, as he loudly declared to me, is “crazy and a Vietnam Vet.” Jim moved to Alaska after three distinguished tours in Vietnam, fished and raised a family. It was apparent that Jim was indeed ‘crazy’ from his wild speech but he was also gentle and kind. Tom and Jim live with Jim’s adult son. Tom is in his forties, cheerful and bright. As we talked, Tom mildly corrected Jim’s most outrageous statements and made intelligent conversation about education. It wasn’t clear to me what Tom’s life story was, but it was obvious that he was currently looking out for Jim. I’m proud to think that Food Bank of Alaska, Anchorage City Church, The Salvation Army and our partners in the GIFT project made life a little easier and the holidays a little brighter for Tom and Jim. 12/14/09 He cried, “Susannah!” and gave me a huge hug. This kindly gentleman “William” is a regular client at the Anchorage East Rotary Mobile Food Pantry distribution. I hadn’t seen William in a couple of months, because I’ve been staying home with my new baby on Saturdays instead of coming to the Mobile Food Pantry. But when I finally did show my face, William was there to welcome me. William, who will celebrate his 76th birthday next month, and his wife live on a fixed income that doesn’t cover all their basic needs. So he comes to the Mobile Food Pantry to stretch their grocery budget. He has white hair and twinkling blue eyes, and his back is slightly bent from a lifetime of fixing machines. His buoyant nature lifts the spirits of everyone he meets. William brushed off my questions about his well-being and wanted to hear all about my 10-month old son and preparations for his first Christmas. As I watched William climb into a neighbor’s car, I thought that, while we may have given William food, he gave me the much more precious gift of community. 12/4/09 Christmas is coming! The goose is getting fat! Please put a penny in an old man’s hat. If you have no penny, a ha-penny will do. If you have no ha-penny, then God bless you! I grew up singing this tune in the holiday season, but I was an adult before I fully realized that the ‘singer’ is an elderly man begging on the streets. The song also ends with the compassionate acknowledgement that other people besides the old man have no resources for Christmas. But the tune is sprightly and cheerful. FBA is preparing to help our hungry neighbors this Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanzaa or other joyous holiday occasions. FBA is one of the leaders of the Neighborhood GIFT program, a food and toy distribution on December 22. We are thrilled to join The Salvation Army, the US Marine Corps Toys for Tots program and the faith community to bring light into our neighbors’ lives. 11/25/09 “...And I do further recommend that the day thus appointed be made a special occasion for deeds of kindness and charity to the suffering and the needy, so that all who dwell within the land may rejoice and be glad in this season of national thanksgiving...” Chester A. Arthur, Thanksgiving Proclamation 1882. Blessing is the hardest, longest day of the FBA year. But it is my favorite, too. I love the difference we are able to make in the lives of our neighbors - providing festive food in a respectful, joyous manner. At the Blessing site at Central Lutheran Church, volunteers discovered a pregnant woman in line who was in labor. She had to pause every few minutes for a contraction, but she saying that she knew she'd give birth and be home by Thanksgiving - and her family really needed the food. The good folks at that site hurried her to the front of the line. It tears my heart out to think that some of our neighbors are so desperate for food assistance. But I am incredibly thankful that we are in a position to help. 11/13/09 ‘How’ sometimes matters as much as ‘what’. Thanksgiving Blessing is founded upon, supported by, and enlivened by faith. For each of the past five years, the faith community in Anchorage has come together to say: “It matters that our neighbors are hungry, and we are going to do something about it. But most importantly, we are going to do it well – drawing on our faith, with respect for people of other faiths, and above all with love.” The day of Thanksgiving Blessing is my favorite day of the year. I delight in the opportunity to serve so many of my neighbors on a single day. But even more, I am utterly enraptured by the festival atmosphere the faith communities create for Blessing. Walk into a Blessing site, and you will find expressions of love. There may be espresso drinks, or homemade cookies, or live music, or a big bouncy tent for children. You will also find folks waiting to get their turkey and fixings, but the overall feeling is generally of a carnival or community event, not a charity give-away. It is the ‘how’ – the way in which the faith community provides food and love – that makes Blessing such a special day for me. 11/6/09 Half of all children will be on food stamps at some point before they are eighteen. Professor Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis has been poring over reams of Food Stamp program data. His conclusions include the fact that 49.2% of all American children will, at some point, live in a household enrolled in the Food Stamp program. These households are likely to utilize Food Stamps for short periods – a few months or a year. But they are also likely to re-enroll a couple times during the childhood years. Think about this for a minute. Families can only receive Food Stamps if their household income is below 135% of poverty (about $30,000 for a family of three) and they meet a number of other criteria. So if one out of two children will receive Food Stamps, then every other child on a school bus will live in a family on the edge of poverty. But it also means that, thanks to Food Stamps, these children have a better chance of getting adequate nutrition. We are entering the holiday season, in which Americans are extraordinarily generous. This holiday season I challenge you to take an extra step. Give locally to help your hungry neighbors have happy holidays. But also sign up to receive our Advocacy Alerts and start contacting our legislators to support the Food Stamp program and other safety net programs that protect our children from hunger. 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