Pete Nebhut

 

By Andrea Sherwood

Does food insecurity impact peace and war or the choices children face? Share your thoughts. Let’s have a discussion as uncomfortable as it will be as we sip on our coffee, tea, soda or beverage of choice while we blog and “engage” from a distance.

After reading, Ishmael Beah’s, A Long Way: Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, my answers to the questions have not changed. They remain a definite “yes.” However, I now hold specific images in my mind as to how food insecurity impacts individuals, communities and the world. This book has forever changed me and the emotions that are stirred within as think about, discuss with others and engaged in solutions to the food crisis in the world and world peace.

Regardless, of how you answered the previous questions, I believe this is a must read book! Ishmael shares his journey as a young child becoming a soldier and then his journey of rehabilitation back into civilian life by age 18. Discover what food means to a boy solider. Learn about Ishmael’s amazing journey of rehabilitation and how he almost looses it all because of a quest for food. This is a book that is hard to put down, yet hard to keep reading because of the reality that unfolds before your eyes.  Let me know what you think.

By Susan Brockway

New numbers have just been released and as expected, the number of people lacking food continues to grow.  At the food bank for which I'm board president, we look at each and every dollar closely and wonder what to do to make it stretch. 
Volunteers obviously are essential to helping meeting growing need.  Each volunteer hour represents dollars in offset labor costs.  Most food banks simply would not be in business were it not for the tireless efforts of their volunteers. 
Here's a way you can honor your best volunteers:  Nominate them as a Tyson Hunger All-Star.  They'll be recognized on this site, and each month we select one volunteer whose local Feeding America food bank will receive a truckload of Tyson products in his or her name. 
So take a little time and honor your volunteers for the assets they truly are.
 

We recently ran into Jack McConnell, who helps run the food pantry at the First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ.  His agency was among the fifty receiving food at the University of Arkansas/Tyson/Lift Up America event in late January.

Jack's agency served more than 10,000 people last year. Here he discusses how the need has recently grown. 

View Tyson Foods Hunger Relief Donations in a larger map

Here's a Google map I created on Friday of the truckload donations Tyson has done in the past year.  Notice all of the icons are clickable for more information. You can zoom in to the street address (with apologies to those recipients whose addresses I didn't nail precisely--I did this all in one day).    We plan on keeping it updated, so it will be an archive of what we're doing (just wish it had been around ten years ago). 

Creating it got me thinking:  Food banks could use this free tool to plot all of their agencies, along with their relevant information.  Notice above that Goodgle supplies you with some embeddable code, so you can put it on your blog or website.  You can set it with any number of collaborators (including a wide-open wiki style), so conceivably agencies could enter and edit their own information. 

Getting started is easy, and begins with setting up a Google account. 

Imagine if all of the food banks did this, then the maps were aggregated; if the world could see all 63,000 agencies in one view, then zoom into the ones working in their state, community and neighborhood.   That might be kinda cool.