This paper summarizes my participation in two tours at the San Antonio Food Bank and the Child Bereavement center by outlining their contributions and their efficacy as a client referral. I then relate the referral process and information obtained at these resources to the text.
On March 12, 2014, I participated in a private tour of the San Antonio Food Bank with Jennifer Epstein. She immediately welcomed me and was receptive to my questioning. She identified issues such as food insecurity and fear that may cause a client to seek assistance. She disclosed that the San Antonio Food Bank was started in the early 1980’s and has since grown to one of the most successful food bank operations in the nation. According to my tour guide facilitator Jennifer Epstein, the food bank accepts 56 million pounds of food annually, 1,000 volunteer hours weekly, and provides 18 culinary programs at no cost to the public. The Food Bank also partners with school districts to provide meals for after school programs such as the Boys and Girls Club, summer food programs and park and recreation events. The...
According to Dolgoff and Feldstein (2003), “the needs and goals of the Food Stamp Program are to alleviate hunger and malnutrition by enabling low-income households to buy a nutritious adequate diet” (p. 132). The program also improved the market for local merchants to produce food for eligible low-income households and other agencies such as the School Lunch Program which safeguard the health and wel...
The mission of the agency is to “provide for the needs of hungry people by gathering and sharing quality food with dignity, compassion, and education”. Volunteers were there to restock the shelves and bag the food for the clients. The staff duties consisted of interviewing clients and making sure the facility ran smoothly. Harvest Hope serves a diverse population residing within Lexington, West Columbia, and Cayce.
The foundation partners with local community and grassroots organizations to “create innovative solutions to food access and health in their communities.” These solutions include urban farms and cooking classes. Since its 2014 inception, the foundation has developed partnerships in three cities, with future partnerships planned and a commitment to raising $1 million in seed money to programmatic operations over the next three
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. (2013). Food programs . Retrieved from http://www.curehunger.org/Programs/FoodPrograms.aspx
Letters, emails and phone calls soliciting for donations along with providing an awareness of the need to assist the homeless individuals. To co-workers, associates, local providers which provide services to the homeless population, advertising it in my email’s signature page, Face Book, conversations with some community members such as the Columbus House, United Way, Whalley Avenue Special Service District, and local distributors in the City of New Haven and speak to local business; including a request to WTNH Channel 8 Community News to provide a television segment to encourage the community and other organizations that can make a contribution with products or monetary donations to the need of the project. In addition, if there is not enough donations to continue this project in the future, fundraiser of home made lunch meals, will be implemented. Without that source of community and organization supports, there is little likelihood of a successful implementation of the
In order to determine the prevalence of households that are food insecure, “The Food Security Supplement is administered annually to about 45,000 households as part of the monthly, nationally representative Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The supplement has been conducted annually since 1995.” (Health Indicators Warehouse, 2013). The survey was developed by the USDA in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control, and asks participants questions about their confiden...
Did you know that one in five households in the United States are considered to have food insecurity. Food insecurity is described by the USDA as meaning “consistent access to adequate food is limited by the lack of money and other resources at times during the year” (2014). This affects 31 million people in the United States, which includes 15.9 million children under the age of 18. For example, the Walls family in The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls leaves a great example of what it is like to be under these circumstances. Currently, with prices of food rising to an all time high, so does the number of people not able to buy the basic foods they need to live a full life. By increasing spending on food benefit programs in the United States, guarantees less people who suffer from food insecurity.
When considering the topic of poverty and hunger, many Americans look outside the borders of the United States. However, food insecurity is an issue that plagues millions of American households each year. The United States Department of Agriculture found that 14.5% of American households faced food insecurity during 2012. These households were defined as having “difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources” (Nord, Singh, Coleman-Jensen).
Many people here in America are hardworking and resourceful, but an insecure economy can have a long-lasting effect on a diverse group of people. One of the greatest manifestations of this is the inability to consistently afford a healthy diet. In a report by done by researchers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ‘in 2011, 14.9 percent or 17.9 million people in America were food insecure (Coleman-Jensen, Nordic, Andrews, & Carlson, 2012).’ Although many different organizations such as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” or the SNAP food stamp program has set out to eradicate hunger, by giving assistance to low income participants, to help them afford food, it does still exist in many different people’s lives, at one point or another. While many other underdeveloped countries have harder times with hunger, many of them, due to socioeconomic difficulties, hunger still causes many problems for different people in America.
The Guelph Food Bank, is an essential organization in Guelph. The purpose of the food bank is to provide food to the less fortunate. With an unpredictable economy, many people are living paycheque to paycheque, trying to survive on little income. Due to the high costs of rent, not all people are able to purchase groceries and rely on the food bank to provide them with the essentials. The Guelph food bank also serves people who are unemployed as well as people who are living with illnesses. Welfare cheques simply do not provide enough to cover all the expenses that an average person has to deal with. Therefore, the Guelph foodbank’s mission is to not only provide food to the unemployed but to also help people who do not have enough money to purchase food. It not only wants to help people short term, but its goal to help people in the long term by helping them become independent of organizations.
Fresh foods grown from the ground, lean meat and fish are not as promptly accessible at low cost. It is important to discuss the factors of this lifestyle within the African-American community. The presenter of such information might need to discuss methods for acquiring quality food despite monetary deficit, for example, developing little gardens in the community; shopping at roadside garden markets; shopping at supermarkets instead of convenient stores; developing financial budgeting organization and food co-ops; and participating in food bank programs (Belle,
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
In the United States of America, the richest nation of the world, one in six Americans do not have enough food to eat. Have you ever wonder why there are so many food banks and food pantries throughout the country? They are not simply, as you thought, existent to offer emergency food assistance. Indeed, they are the main sources of food to millions of food-insecure Americans. Food insecurity, the state of not having sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food, has been very widespread and common in America. It affected millions of Americans and has been increasing dramatically in recent years; in 2012, more than 48 millions of food-insecure Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (McMillan). The depth
In order to fulfill the 12 hours of community service requirement for Nutrition course 139 I applied with five organizations on the approved list. The organization that replied me the fastest was Open Heart Kitchen, they mostly operate in Pleasanton and Livermore areas. Their application and signing up for shift process gives a feeling that this organization is massive, and many individuals really care about the less fortunate. From observation and conversations with the site supervisor, I believe this organization relies on individual donations, small business donations and large corporate donations such as Safeway and Walmart. This organization also relies on volunteers to work every day, they get workers from students fulfilling their hours and resume, individuals fulfilling court orders, and those that just want to help the less fortunate.
We, Aimee Johnson and Jessie Virnig, along with Amy Wilson and Shawn Klimek, decided to try to give the homeless a little hope. The week before Christmas we went door to door and collected food for the local homeless shelter. We decided to focus on collecting food because around the Christmas season, a lot of emphasis is put on toy drives and people sometimes overlook the fact that the homeless still need to eat. In order to broaden our research, we decided to collect food from more than one group of people. We went to an average middle class neighborhood and to a college dormitory. Before we went out into the neighborhood and dorms, we prepared a thank you letter to give to everyone explaining to them who we were, to tell them that we were collecting food for the homeles...