Too Much For Some, Too Little For Others

Posted By elissa on Dec 6, 2010 | 4 comments

This morning, I donated $100.00 to the Inland Northwest branch of Second Harvest. I also made note of volunteer times/dates for both Second Harvest and the local food bank in Richland. While there are always those who require food assistance, the number of people in need is growing. According to my local paper:

PASCO — Hundreds of people stood in line Thursday, many holding cardboard boxes over their heads to block lightly falling snow at Tierra Vida in east Pasco.

Soon those boxes were full of potatoes, tomatoes, bread, lettuce, coleslaw, dressing, carrots and apples distributed by Second Harvest’s mobile food bank. The reward for braving the weather was meals for needy families.

Second Harvest typically serves as a food bank for area food banks, providing them with fresh produce and other donated food.

…Wieber said the nonprofit uses the mobile food banks to reach rural areas that don’t have the same resources that are available in cities with food banks. And the mobile food banks speed the delivery of produce and perishable items, which make up 70 percent of the agency’s products, she said.

Last year, Second Harvest provided mobile food bank visits 117 times in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, Wieber said. Between July of this year and next June, it aims to provide 150.

…Leanne Smith, CASA community outreach coordinator, said people were waiting in line 45 minutes before the mobile food bank was scheduled to open.

“There are a lot of hungry people out there,” she said.

 There’s more:

Families already were lining up in the Richland Food Bank’s waiting room before the food bank opened earlier this week.

First in line was Velma Sutton, a Richland widow who used to volunteer at the food bank years ago.

The 82-year-old said she had to stop volunteering when she no longer could lift heavy items. Since the 1990s she has been coming to the food bank to receive food.

Sutton said the food helps her get by on what she receives from Social Security, which she uses to pay rent, medical insurance and other bills.

She sees familiar faces among the other clients and said they visit while they wait to pick up food.

“There are so many people that need help,” she said.

Indeed there are. And this is a part of the country that’s still relatively untouched by high unemployment and the collapse of the housing bubble.

Unlike the featherbrains in the “McNuggetini” video – for whom food is simply a plaything – there are a lot of people who are just barely getting by. Thus, it behooves all of us who can, to give a little more this holiday season and to consume a little less.