Summertime and the living is easy. But not for all.
In this land of embarrassing bounty, where million-dollar homes can cross into the realm of fixer-uppers, regional food banks are reporting a brisk business.
Paradoxically, the fertile summer months ”“ when first the strawberries and then the tomatoes and corn fill our cornucopia ”“ are the lean times for food pantries.
The reason is simple: The kids are out of school. Meals they had been receiving at school must wait till September, even as human biology stubbornly continues to refuse to recognize days, dates and seasons.
The need has us asking our readers to consider the food banks on the business level and to reconfigure, if necessary, their companies”™ philanthropic largesse so more sustenance finds its way into grumbling stomachs. Think of it as akin to manna from heaven or multiplying loaves and fishes and we”™ll leave it to scholars to dither over whether the analogy is appropriate or fallacious. Let”™s feed now and ask questions later; those dishing free breakfasts have seen demand rise 40 percent this year over last in some cases.
Companies rallied to big-name catastrophes like Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami as if it were part of their mission statements. You”™ll recall Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush did not jawbone citizens on the street corner to help with the tsunami; they appealed (successfully) to those with deep pockets and to corporations.
We ask for a gut check closer to home on an issue that lacks glamour, but which defines how a person spends his or her day. It”™s easy to imagine a well-fed child playing ball on a July morning and then skipping over to the library for reading and a video and finally curling up to sleep beside a jar of fireflies. It is equally impossible to imagine a hungry child doing any of these things.
One food pantry executive told staff reporter Mary Iarocci, “There are just really regular folks who are struggling to put gas in their cars or buy groceries for their children, and it”™s just really unfortunate and frightening because they”™re just regular people. They also make choices to buy their prescription medications. So something falls by the wayside because there”™s just not enough money to cover all of that.”
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Her program serves seniors, single parents and their children, the under-employed, the unemployed and the Latino day laborer population or “anyone who needs to have a good, healthy start to the day.” She cited a 40 percent increase in the number of breakfasts served since last year at this time. From March 2007 to March 2008, 8,820 breakfasts were served compared with 6,096 breakfasts served the previous year.
Hunger can appear to inhabit only the evening news, something that happens in Africa and Myanmar. It is usually not the bailiwick of business newspapers. But we are both citizens and business people, often with the opportunity to affect change on both levels: We can give to the church, mosque or synagogue via the family budget and we can give to stop hunger right around the corner via the company”™s charitable budget.
Sweat equity works, too.
Some months ago, we met a Stuart Weitzman, a chiropractor who started his own food bank. “Last year, we donated almost 400 pounds of food,” he told us of the collection area he maintains by the office front door each December. “I”™m overwhelmed at my patients”™ generosity.” We offer his enthusiasm and recognition of the need as a template. As focal points of activity, businesses constitute great places to gather nonperishable foodstuffs and money.
We have, as a society, turned the hunger equation on its ear with the snapshot of affluent people being thin and the underclass being fat. Painting with that broad brush leaves the impression there is no hunger: the rich starve themselves voluntarily and the poor have too much to eat. Such observations hold water only for the person unwilling to look past TV punchlines. The realities are far more nuanced, and on the no-food end of the spectrum, the laughter is nonexistent.
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