Articles related to hunger in the news.
The New York Times
By Natasha Singer
The farm stand is becoming the new apothecary, dispensing apples — not to mention artichokes, asparagus and arugula — to fill a novel kind of prescription.
Doctors at three health centers in Massachusetts have begun advising patients to eat “prescription produce” from local farmers’ markets, in an effort to fight obesity in children of low-income families. Now they will give coupons amounting to $1 a day for each member of a patient’s family to promote healthy meals. Read more...
Salem News
By Matthew K. Roy Staff writer
PEABODY — The modest garden behind a parking lot in downtown Peabody is, admittedly, not yet what it will be. "It wasn't planted at an ideal time so the quality of the plants aren't all that wonderful," said Betsy Leeman, Citizens for Adequate Housing's director of development.
But with attentive care and patience, a necessary virtue for any gardener, the three raised beds should realize their potential. Not only will they produce fresh fruits and vegetables, but Leeman is hoping they will provide valuable lessons in healthy living for the homeless families her organization serves. Read more...
Globe North
by David Rattigan
A little more than a year ago, the land behind La Fruiteria warehouse on Manchester Street in Lawrence was a brownfield site. Now it’s a playground.
"It's perfect," said Glenny Lara, 30, a resident of the nearby Arlington neighborhood who brings her young daughters to the park three times a week. "I can come here and bring my kids and enjoy it, instead of staying indoors."...
...Since 2001, with more emphasis in recent years, the city has made an effort to create more green space - through renovating parks and playgrounds, by turning small vacant lots into pocket parks, and by adding community gardens, which allow residents to grow their own flowers, vegetables, and fruit in individual planting boxes. Read article...
The Salem News
by Tony Dalton
SALEM — St. Joseph's Food Pantry, one of the largest free food distribution programs on the North Shore, is moving out of a Catholic church in the heart of the downtown and into an old manufacturing building across the North River.
The move will sever the pantry's last symbolic tie with the Catholic Church and locate it about a mile from the low-income parish neighborhood where it began. Read article...
by Fred Berry
Schools across the North Shore have closed the books on another year.
For many children, it is the most wonderful time of the year, filled with vacations, camps, barbecues and family outings. Unfortunately for a growing number of other children, however, it is a time when they face going hungry.
During the school year, eligible children are afforded free or subsidized meals. But when the schools close, they lose the security and nutrition provided by a school breakfast, lunch or both. Read more...
First Church Congregational Boxford is pleased to announce the opening of their Food Pantry.
The Food Pantry is stocked with non-perishable food items, and has just received an operating permit.
The Pantry is for those in need in the Tri-Town area. To set an appointment with a Food Pantry staff member you may contact the church office at 978-887-5841.
The Salem News
by Sylvia Rosen
correspondent
Yesterday, you may have noticed a little something extra in your mailbox. Letter carriers dropped off postcard reminders and plastic bags encouraging residents to participate in this year's Stamp Out Hunger food drive.
The drive runs locally in Salem, Beverly, Danvers, Hamilton, Ipswich, Peabody, Manchester, Marblehead, Swampscott, Topsfield and Wenham. It is the largest one-day food drive in the country, involving 10,000 cities and towns nationwide. Residents are asked to fill a plastic bag with nonbreakable, nonperishable foods and place it by their mailbox for the letter carrier to pick up. The National Association of Letter Carriers will conduct the food drive this Saturday. Julie Bishop, vice president at the Essex County Community Foundation, said most local food pantries have seen a 35 percent increase in the number of people seeking help over the last two years, fueled in large part by the recession. The Community Foundation donates plastic bags for residents to fill in some cities and towns, serving as a reminder to residents about the food drive.
"In Gloucester, they had an 80 percent increase in the amount of food they collected because of the bags," Bishop said. Read more...
Elaine Miller, Community Services Director at Community Action, Inc. in Haverhill and member of the Haverhill Hunger Round Table emphasized that that this year’s food drive is critical to meet ongoing needs among residents. “Due to our economic circumstances, many Haverhill families are suffering – struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table, Haverhill pantries have all experienced a surge in the number of families seeking help through the local network and collectively Haverhill pantries serve at least 1000 families monthly. “
Pantries are in particular need of soups, salad dressings, sauces, pasta, cereals and vegetables. All food products should be current, expired items will only serve to overload letter carriers only to be discarded by volunteers.
The Haverhill Hunger Round Table is a network of six city based pantries including Sacred Hearts Parish Pantry, The Salvation Army Pantry, Open Hand Pantry, Calvary Baptist Church Pantry, All Saints Church Pantry and The Veterans’ Food Pantry. The Haverhill Hunger Round Table exists to insure there is a food pantry open in the city seven days a week and to support local meal sites including the Haverhill Drop-In Center for homeless individuals, Somebody Cares New England and the Community Meal Program. The network meets monthly at the Presidential Garden’s Community Center is open to any organization concerned with hunger relief.
For more information contact Elaine Miller at emiller@communityactioninc.org or (978) 373-1971 and for residents needing help with food please visit www.essexcountyhungerrelief.org.
The Salem News
By Sylvia Rosen, Correspondent
IPSWICH — At 9 in the morning, you can find Joyce Burrier waiting by the door at Whittier Manor on Caroline Avenue. She is there to unload packages of nutritious meals that will make their way into homes all over Ipswich. The meals are for SeniorCare's lunch program, Meals on Wheels.
It's a program that is making a difference for a lot of older people in town.
"Meals on Wheels gives people a chance to live independently," Burrier said. "We have a man that is 101 years old and living by himself, because he can — because we help feed him." Read more...
The Gloucester Times
By Sophie Hagberg
The Cape Ann Farmers Market will undergo several changes this season, adding terminals to provide access for those on assistance programs, shifting its location, and expanding its hours and the Backyard Gardeners Program.
Market manager Nicole Bogin said a grant from the state has enabled the market to input Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) terminals.These stations will allow vendors to process vouchers from senior citizens and from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the new name for food stamps. Read more...
Andover Townsman
Andover, MA
The Coalition to Protect Animals Locally, a non-profit, local organization whose mission is to support animals, has been donating pet food to organizations like Neighbors in Need, which operates seven food pantries in the Merrimack Valley and feeds over 500 families a week. After being contacted by Andover's Linda Zimmerman, executive director of NIN, and told that CoPAL's prior two pet food donations were almost all gone, volunteers from CoPAL loaded up their minivan and on March 24 contributed more than another 600 pounds of pet food. Read More...
Gordon College News Services
By Maggie Roth
They’re sharpening knives, grabbing aprons, and cooking up a storm, not for some culinary prize but for a good cause.
On Monday, February 8th, Beverly area chefs will show their stuff in the first annual Bootstraps Best Chef Competition. Sponsored by Beverly Bootstraps Community Services, a nonprofit organization in Beverly, MA, that seeks to give “a hand up, not a hand out,” the unique event began as an idea from an intern and has grown into a cook off involving four local, chef-owned restaurants competing against one another, taking the majority of their ingredients from the Bootstraps pantry and hoping their creations will win the flavor-favors of prominent local judges (including Mayor Bill Scanlon of Beverly, CEO Ken Hanover of Beverly Hospital, and cookbook author Anna Kasabian of Manchester). Read more...
New York Times
by Jason DeParle
WASHINGTON — Nearly one in five Americans said they lacked the money to buy the food they needed at some point in the last year, according to a survey co-sponsored by the Gallup organization and released Tuesday by an anti-hunger group.
The numbers soared at the start of the recession, but dipped in 2009 despite the continuing rise in unemployment. The anti-hunger group, the Food Research and Action Center, attributed that trend to falling food prices, an increasing use of food stamps and a rise in the amount of the food stamps benefit.
More than 38 million Americans — one in eight — now receive food stamps, a record high. Read more...
Boston Globe
by Joel Brown, Globe Correspondent
Hunger is on the rise in Essex County, and so is the urge to help.
The new Essex County Hunger Relief website, www.essexcountyhungerrelief.org, connects those in need with local food pantries, and shows donors and volunteers places where they can contribute.
Area antihunger organizations “are all seeing this huge increase in need,’’ said Julie Bishop, vice president for grants and services at the Essex County Community Foundation, the Danvers-based organization that created the site. “People who had been donors are coming to be clients.’’
The easy-to-use site puts information about the area’s 60 sources of food assistance in one place. The Find Food page provides the location of the nearest food pantry, as well as such information as hours and residency requirements. Read more...
The Salem News
By Tom Dalton
Staff writer
SALEM — The Salem Pantry, one of the city's longest-operating food pantries, has expanded its service from once to twice a month. The pantry traditionally has been open on the last Saturday of every month. Beginning this weekend, it will also be open on the second Saturday.
"We have been talking about expanding our commitment to the community, and that is really what we wanted to do," said Elizabeth Black, the pantry director.
The move was triggered, in part, by the difficult economic times, the director said.
"We've noticed a lot of new people, fresh faces coming through, especially over the last year," she said.
The pantry, which is open from 9:30 to 11 a.m., is at 211 Bridge St. inside The First Universalist Society of Salem. Read more...
The Daily News
By Liz King
Staff Writer
AMESBURY — The number of homeless people forced to live in motel rooms, shelters and even in their cars is reaching levels so high that service agencies can't keep up.
For 25 years, Community Action Inc. has helped hundreds of local families with rent, mortgage and utility assistance. But the Amesbury center's homeless aid fund, which is made up of private donations from the community and corporations, has been emptied, said Elaine Miller, director of Community Services at the Haverhill-based CAI.
"Our Amesbury homeless aid fund has been depleted for the first time in about 10 years," Miller said. "It's difficult to keep up with demand, and we expect things will be the same in 2010 — we haven't seen change in the economy, and the forecast isn't looking bright."
The Daily News
To the editor:
We wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who've supported Community Action Inc.'s Amesbury Center during a particularly difficult 2009. Donations of food, clothing and cash have allowed our staff to keep pace with the growing needs among local families coping with a very stubborn economy, rising housing costs and joblessness. Unemployment across the region has doubled over the same period last year, forcing many moderate-income families to turn to us for help for the very first time. Without individual giving, foundation support, corporate donations and the support of local parishes and civic groups, we would be unable to meet every need.
Community Action, Inc. has maintained a presence in Amesbury for more than 25 years providing our seacoast neighbors with direct relief in the form of rent, mortgage and utility assistance, homeless aid, help with utilities, food and clothing — in short, we are there to help families with basic needs, maintain a safe, warm home and put food on their tables. In 2009, we were able to provide more than $50,000 in emergency rent or utility assistance, prevent 10 local families from becoming homeless, assist one family displaced by fire and relocate seven families living in unsafe, unhealthy environments. Our pantry provided 500 families each month with food, and we connected hundreds of residents to heating assistance, WIC and SNAP benefits.
This kind of support would not be possible without community giving, and we are truly heartened by the spirit, kindness and generosity of our donors year-round. Right now, our Amesbury Center has an urgent need for pantry food — cereal, soups and vegetables along with cash donations to rebuild our homeless aid fund so that we may continue helping local families facing homelessness. Tax-deductible contributions may be sent to Community Action, Inc., 11 School St., Amesbury, MA 01913. The Amesbury Center is open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and appointments may be scheduled by calling 978-388-2570.
Best wishes to all for a peaceful holiday season.
Elaine M. Miller
Community Services director
The Daily News
By Lynne Hendricks
staff writer
AMESBURY — Last night, Rosemary Werner looked out upon the sea of volunteers serving the annual holiday meal at Our Neighbors' Table and felt a mixture of sadness and joy to see so many smiling faces arriving to minister to those struggling through the holiday season.
As she tended to the details for what would be her last official holiday dinner as director of ONT — with temperatures hovering in the 20s and the wind whipping across the church lawn — Werner was feeling grateful to have steaming hot cups of coffee to deliver to people lined up in the cold for holiday assistance. Read more...
The Daily News
By Lynne Hendricks
Staff Writer
NEWBURYPORT — A woman sat in the parking lot of Our Neighbors' Table this week for hours before gaining the courage to walk inside the food pantry and seek help with providing food for her family.
For someone who had always worked and managed to provide food for her family's dinner table, the short walk to the pantry's front door was a humbling, difficult journey, Our Neighbors' Table director Rosemary Werner said. That's the kind of struggle Werner is seeing more and more this holiday season, as a number of out-of-work families find themselves running out of money and options. Read more...
Associated Press
SEATTLE – Food banks across the country are undergoing a high-tech revolution, adopting sophisticated databases, bar coding, GPS tracking, automated warehouses and other technologies used in the food industry that increasingly supplies their goods.
It's a long way from handing out macaroni and canned soup from a church basement.
While more people can be fed through these innovations, food bank directors say it's also a sad acknowledgment that hunger has become a huge and seemingly unending problem.
"What we tell people a lot is that we are a food distribution business wrapped in an altruistic skin," says Jan Pruitt, president and CEO of the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas.
Her food bank, along with Food Lifeline in Seattle and the Food Bank of Central New York in East Syracuse, are testing a $60 million effort by Feeding America, an umbrella organization for about 200 U.S. food banks, to create a state-of-the-art national computer networkthat will greatly automate services.
The Athena Project, which started rolling out this summer, will let food banks upgrade and standardize accounting, inventory and donor software, take full advantage of the Internet, and manage pickups and deliveries much the same way FedEx or UPS track packages. Chicago-based Feeding America is installing the systems at no charge and separately from its operating budget, thanks in part to financial and in-kind donations, says Kevin Lutz, vice president for technology.
For local pantries and kitchens — and the people at their doors — it should mean more food and the kind they actually like and need, Pruitt and others say. Donors, from agribusinesses to the 10-year-old collecting cans at a birthday party, can be assured that less is being spent on overhead and more on helping the hungry.
"We are going to gain so much efficiency," says Linda Nageotte, Food Lifeline's president and CEO. "We're going to be able to provide so much better accountability, and this also really increases our credibility."
Lutz says that when the project is completed in five years, it could save food banks up to four times its $60 million cost — money that could go toward food and other services.
Since the first food bank, St. Mary's in Phoenix, opened in 1967, many in the movement hoped they would soon work themselves out of business, Pruitt said. Instead, most agencies have become mainstays of their communities, supplying tons of food to pantries, soup kitchens and other local programs.
"In 1982, when this food bank opened, their first year of distribution was 400,000 pounds," Pruitt said, of her Dallas-based organization. "We now do that in one day."
The recession has only made things worse. Pruitt estimates food demand in her area has grown by a third in the past year. Nationally, Feeding America says the 63,000 local agencies served by its food banks aid more than 25 million people annually.
Without the new technology, "We just simply couldn't do what we do," says Carol Schneider, spokeswoman for the Food Bank For New York City.
In 2002, the food bank, which handles about 60 million pounds of food each year, replaced its paper system with a bar code system and wireless network at its 90,000 square-foot warehouse in the Bronx.
Food banks are trying to provide more fresh meat and produce, much of it gathered unsold from supermarkets. Pruitt says that means her 17 trucks have to quickly reach 126 individual stores in addition to distribution centers and scores of food drives each week — almost impossible without computer scheduling.
Besides New York, some larger food banks, including St. Mary's and, not surprisingly, Silicon Valley's Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, have already embraced technology. The problem, Lutz says, has been making it widespread, standardized and interconnected.
For Nageotte, it can't come soon enough. In September, Food Lifeline received all new computers and enterprise management software — a huge change, she said, from years of making do.
"We had a cobbled-together system — some new computers, some old, some worked well, some were barely limping," she said. Records were in five separate databases "and none of them talk to one another."
Athena, she and others say, opens a world of possibilities:
• GPS tracking and instant communication to send trucks on the most efficient routes. Lutz says this alone can cut transportation costs by 40 percent. Food Lifeline is equipping drivers with smart phones that eventually could scan in donations as they are picked up.
• Inventory management systems to track every food item, from truckloads of potatoes to individually donated cans. This not only saves time and reduces waste, but is a safeguard for product recalls.
• Generating lists of food, money and volunteer hours for donors, handy at tax time.
• Common software and backup computer servers, allowing agencies to trade or divert food, share donor information or step in if a food bank is overwhelmed by a disaster.
Such innovations aid a strategy that "needs to be twofold," she says. "It needs to be about feeding the people who are standing in line better and it needs to be about making the line shorter."
By Jonah Ruh
Lawrence, MA
Bread and Roses was founded 30 years ago with the philosophy of it’s namesake, The Bread and Roses strike of 1912. The strike was started by women demanding better pay and humanitarian treatment from the mills they worked for. “Bread for the body, Roses for the soul” they stated. Now Bread and Roses Soup Kitchen operates with these ideals firmly intact- providing a good meal 5 days a week in a warm, caring and homey atmosphere. “It’s like a family here”, says director Bob Lanzoni. “Anyone with a birthday that night, gets a cake.” If a child has a birthday they get to go up to the magical kids room and choose a toy. If someone needs shaving cream and Bob has it, he supplies them.
Bob explains how Bread and Roses works.”We have about 150 guests each night. 80 of those are regulars, people who by their economic situation will likely never make it on their own and 70 who come sometimes or only once- among these there are always new faces.” They have only 1.5 paid employees and still the place is spotless, organized and welcoming. “We have a wonderful crew of regular volunteers. In addition, we have 23 groups that come to cook once or twice every 6 week block. These groups include businesses, churches, sororities and other youth groups. It is a system that brings freshness, variety and community involvement- many having been loyal for years."
I look around the dining room that looks like a country café and notice how shiny and clean the floors look. Bob explains, “Many of our guests are also our volunteers”. The Department of Transitional Assistance requires people to have 30 hours of community service per month to receive food stamps or welfare. “I have one regular guest who also comes to clean and wax the floors. He came to me with his papers from the DTA, saying. ‘I want to volunteer’. We set up an arrangement with the expectation that he commit to this job and be here on time and do a good work and then I’d sign the papers. Well this guy has really stepped up and done a great job. I also have volunteers come in and clean the walls, others to clean all the chairs and tables, and others to clean the windows.”
Bread and Roses has become known among the area food suppliers as a place to take excess goods. One week Bob receives a call from a distributer with a whole load of broccoli. “Bring it!” Bob says, and for the rest of the day he’s in the kitchen blanching and freezing floret after floret. Nothing goes to waste here and if he can’t use it he calls around the other kitchens and pantries in the area to see if they want it. Last week he had a palette of butternut squash that he left near the door for his guests to take a few on the way out. He was amazed at how fast the squash went. “What I would really like”, he mused, “is a more consistent supply of fresh vegetables.” He is all for community and keeping good communication among the areas kitchens and pantries.” It’s all about the guests- making sure they are taken care of. When we coordinate and share as providers, it improves the care our guests receive.”
Coming up is Bread and Roses annual white Christmas. They give all the guests a duffel bag with white socks, white underwear, a white washcloth and towel, toiletries, winter accessories and whatever else has been donated. The thank-yous they get from the guests ring like chimes; their appreciation glowing and genuine. They send out a letter every year inviting individuals and businesses to donate whatever they can of these items or money to purchase them. Bob shows me upstairs where they store these goods and we enter the old kids’ room. So this is the magical kids’ room I think and I’m captivated by the awesome murals on every wall- they look like children’s dreams... This room used to be for the kids to play. The murals of castles and animals and astronauts were the gifts of a woman who gave up her lunch hour for two years to paint them. Then we go to the next storeroom where there are shelves of clothes and blankets and the beginning accumulations of white Christmas items. “We have a doctor here once a week. He received a grant to check guests who don’t have insurance and refer them for treatment at no charge to them”. Wow! Was all I could say.
All that Bread and Roses is and does has been achieved by long standing dedication and compassion for the guests, inspiring involvement by the community and a commitment to those simple ideals of providing food for the body and roses for the soul.
The Boston Globe
By Brian Benson, Globe Correspondent
The housing market may be struggling, but Cape Ann real estate broker Charlene Delaney is not moping about the weak economy.
Instead, the Gloucester resident uses time that she would have spent showing houses to volunteer at The Open Door, a Gloucester food pantry that also serves Essex, Ipswich, Manchester, and Rockport. Read more...
Eagle Tribune
HAVERHILL — Two days a week isn't enough.
As the number of families struggling to put food on the table grows, a local church is expanding its food pantry operation to provide people with free groceries.
The Sacred Hearts Church pantry, which has been helping needy people for 30 years, has added a third day to its schedule.
Until now, the pantry has been open from 8:30 to 10:45 a.m. Mondays and Fridays. Now it also will be open on Wednesdays at that same time. Read more...
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