Project E.A.T.(Everyone Ate Today)

Food Drive

2010-06-30T11:02:00.002-04:00

Give for the Good food drive is this weekend July 2-3rd from 8am - 6pm at the Maplecrest Kroger parking lot. Last week as I walked out of the church I noticed a woman standing outside the church. She said hi and I went to my car to retrieve what I needed. A little later she stopped at the office for help. She broke down in tears as soon as she started to talk. She needed help for herself and her 4 children. She was so upset that she needed to ask for help. She had moved here from out of town for a pay increase at her job. She was making good money and living the American dream. Then she was laid off. She found herself looking for help which she had not had to do before. They had been eating bread and was very excited to see what we could offer her.

This is the new face of hunger. Folks finding themselves in situations they have never faced before. Some have no idea where to turn for help. With these situations happening more and more often the need is greater than ever. That is why your help this weekend is so important. Please visit the food drive this weekend and bring what you can. Non perishable food items are needed and the list of the main items is included at the bottom. You can also make a cash donation for us to use as we need it. Online donations can be made through the website kokomourbanoutreach.org. Checks can be mailed to Kokomo Urban Outreach 1701 S. Locke, Kokomo,In 46902.

Thank you for doing whatever you can. To volunteer or if you have questions please call Deanna at 765-252-9954.

Items needed:

Canned Vegetables
Canned pasta meals (ravioli, etc.)
Canned fruits
Canned meats (chicken, tuna, beef)
Meal in a can (Beef Stew, Chili, etc.)
Peanut Butter
Macaroni & Cheese
Spaghetti
Spaghetti Sauce
Cereal
Canned Soup (especially tomato & chicken noodle)
Rice, dry beans, boxed potatoes
Pork-n-beans
Toiletries (i.e. shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, feminine hygiene, deodorant)
Toilet Paper

Buddy Bags

2009-01-07T00:59:00.005-05:00

Buddy bags are bags of food that help provide weekend meals to kids who may not have enough to eat on the weekends. We are currently packing over 280 each week that are being distributed to one School. During the 2009-2010 year as schools are merged we will need about 350 sponsors. The cost is $110.00 per school year. Checks may be sent to:

Kokomo Urban Outreach
1701 S. Locke St.
Kokomo, IN 46902

Write Buddy Bag in memo. Thanks for your help.
If you have questions please call KUO at 457-1983 or Deanna at 434-5057.

Much Needed Items

2008-12-26T15:48:00.007-05:00

Top Ten Needs

Spaghetti/Spaghetti Sauce
Canned meat: Treat, Spam, Chicken, tuna
Canned Meals: Corned Beef Hash, Beef Stew, Spaghett0's, Ravioli etc
Cereal
Canned Fruit(peaches, fruit cocktail, oranges, pineapple)
Peanut Butter
Soups--Chicken Noodle, Tomato, Vegetable (cream soups are not that helpful)
Basic Veggies(Green Beans, Corn, Carrots, Mixed Vegetables, Peas)
Toilet Paper
Toothpaste

When we have it we provide each family with several cans of all of the above items. If every food pantry were heavily stocked with the above items many people would be fed. Due to space limitations and the need for eggs and oil cake mixes, pancake mixes etc are not as helpful as basic food. Outdated cans must be discarded and the Board of Health will not allow us to distribute home canned food. Most of our pantries receive bread, cakes, donuts, pies, and other ready made sweet items from Kroger. If you would like to give money, we are able to purchase many of the above items from Food Finders in Lafayette for a reduced cost, often as low as 19 cents per pound.

Kokomo Food Pantry Network

2008-12-22T20:09:00.000-05:00

All below are using the on-line database

Trinity UMC
Riley Modern Estates
Zion (Morrison and Monroe
Pine Valley housed at Alto UMC
Carpenter's House
Samartian Love Center (Button Motors Downtown)
Hands of Love (Crossroads)
Kokomo Rescue Mission
Zion Tabernacle
Hillsdale UMC
St. Luke's UMC
St. Vincent DePaul

Without Pantries but part of network: Information and Referal 211 and United Way

Facts on Childhood Hunger

2008-06-20T20:07:00.001-04:00

Hunger impairs our children’s health in significant and long-lasting ways:

Impedes growth and development
More illness, including stomach- and head aches, colds, ear infections and fatigue
Poorer mental health
More hospitalizations
Greater susceptibility to obesity and its harmful health consequences

Hunger predisposes our children to behavioral difficulties, including:

More aggressive behavior
Higher levels of hyperactivity, anxiety and/or passivity
Difficulty getting along with other children
Greater need for mental health services

Hunger impedes our children’s ability to learn and perform academically. Hungry children are likely to:

Have impaired cognitive functioning and diminished capacity to learn
Achieve lower test scores and overall school performance
Repeat a grade
Experience school absences, tardiness and school suspensions

Food Security

35 million Americans – including 12.6 million children – are food-insecure.

Food insecurity exits in 10% or more of American households:

1 in 10 American homes, with or without children
1 in 6 households with children
1 in 5 with children under the age of 6
1 in 5 single-father homes
1 in 3 single-mother homes

Households with children have a food insecurity rate almost double that of households without children, increasing their risk of hunger tremendously.

Above-average rates of food insecurity (and risk of hunger) occur among:

Single-mom households
Households with children under 18 years of age
African-American or Hispanic households
Households in major cities

Poverty

13.4 million children in America live in poverty today, representing roughly 1 in 6 children.

More than 13% of Americans — 38 million — live below the poverty threshold of $21,200 for a family of four, or $407 per week, on average.

Poverty in America is commonly caused by:

High cost of living
Low wages or income
High health & medical costs
Barriers to education of all kinds
Inadequate or underdeveloped life skills
Little-to-no support network
Widening gap between rich and poor

Children in American households below the poverty threshold or headed by a single woman are at the greatest risk of hunger; not only do these households have the highest rate of food insecurity overall, they also have the highest rate of the most severe form (“very low”) of food insecurity.

Food Assistance Programs & Resources

Child nutrition programs make a positive difference.

Improve nutritional quality of diet
Improve overall behavior and school performance
Promote nutrition education
Reduce incidence of low birth weight and fetal mortality
Reduce anemia

The U.S. government is spending $51 billion on food assistance, including Food Stamp, School Lunch and Breakfast, WIC, and Child and Adult Care Food programs.

1 in 5 Americans use at least one of USDA’s food and nutrition assistance programs during the year.

Food Stamp Program:

The average monthly food stamp benefit is $93 per person-barely $1 per meal.

26.7 million Americans use food stamps in an average month. Half of these recipients are children.

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC):

The WIC program provides 8 million American women and children an average monthly benefit of $38 per person.

Children and infants account for 3/4 of WIC participants.

Every $1 spent on WIC results in $1.77 to $3.13 in Medicaid savings for newborns and their mothers. Additional benefits include:

More women receiving prenatal care
Fewer low birth weight newborns
Less infant mortality
Healthier diets for participants

National School Lunch Program:

Over 29 million American children eat a federally-funded school lunch each school day; 60% of these lunches – 17.4 million — are free or reduced-price.

552,000 more low-income students participate in the school lunch program this year than last.

Children in 11.5 million food-insecure households participate in the free or reduced-price school lunch program.

National School Breakfast Program

Benefits of school breakfast go beyond making sure students don’t start the day hungry. They include:

Promoting healthier eating to fight obesity
Improving students’ achievement, behavior and test scores
Reducing absenteeism, tardiness and visits to the school nurse

44% of school children receiving a free or reduced-price lunch are now also getting a free or reduced-price school breakfast, up from just 29% in 1989.

School breakfast is provided to more than 9 million children on a typical school day.

9.6 million eligible children do not receive free or reduced-price school breakfast

Summer Food Service Program

16 million kids qualify for summer meals but don’t receive them.

Food Banks

Food banks and food-rescue organizations provide emergency hunger-relief to 9% of all Americans-about 25 million persons.

More than one-third of individuals served by food banks are children under 18. Households with children (particularly those headed by a single female or with children under the age of 6) are nearly twice as likely to use food pantries as those without children.

Food pantries provide food to more than 4 million American children.

More than 1 of every 5 households that uses a food pantry does so “almost every month.”

Childhood Hunger

2008-06-20T20:06:00.001-04:00

June 13

Too many Hoosier kids struggling for a lifeline

June 13, 2008
Indy Star

Childhood poverty in Indiana increased at five times the national average between 2000 and 2006, … elevating the rate to the overall national level—18 percent—for the first time ever.

HOOSIER, Indiana — Sometimes, catastrophe strikes with sudden, spectacular force, seizing everyone’s attention and igniting action at every level of society.

Sometimes, it creeps into the community’s fabric inch by inch and day by day, acutely felt by those it directly affects but overlooked by the rest of us until the hour grows late — perhaps too late.

On Wednesday, as eight Indiana counties were declared federal disaster areas and Hoosiers continued to fight back against the weather siege of the past two weeks, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s authoritative annual Kids Count report hit the news.

The document makes for a grim damage assessment and an ominous social and economic forecast.

Childhood poverty in Indiana increased at five times the national average between 2000 and 2006, according to the report, elevating the rate to the overall national level — 18 percent — for the first time ever.

When one in five children in a state can be classified as poor, a cycle of cause and effect is in motion that seems harder to stop than torrential rain.

Low education, inadequate health care and teenage pregnancy, prime obstacles to getting ahead in life, worsen. Government assistance, which requires tax dollars, suffers from a weakened economic base that is impacted, in turn, by an underqualified work force. Businesses, legitimately hurting and at the same time taking advantage of a desperate immigrant labor pool, push down wages. Churches and charities find themselves spread thinner and thinner.

It is everyone’s problem and everyone’s obligation, in short, much in the way that a natural disaster puts the onus on officialdom, private philanthropy, neighbors and each individual to weigh the damage, critique the preparedness and the response, forget finger-pointing and get to work.

Less obviously than in the case of the flooding mobilization, lots of hard work has been done to alleviate the perfect storm of poverty meeting poverty. The state is providing health insurance to more low-income people and dispensing more food stamps, though it has cut the family assistance rolls and is being sued by needy people over Medicaid changes. In Indianapolis in particular, the corporate and philanthropic sectors have ratcheted up their partnerships with the public schools. The schools themselves — private, traditional public and charter — have taken bold strides to cut into the dropout rate.

Many more sandbags need to be hauled. More boats need to be deployed. But with the falling flood waters, as with the rising tide of poverty, the ultimate rescuers are individuals and families themselves. No child must be left to sink, but all must be taught to swim.

Hunger Awareness

2008-06-20T19:41:00.003-04:00

Hunger Awareness

Many people are unaware of the people in our own communities who suffer from hunger or food insecurity. This is especially a problem for the young and elderly people in our communities.

Poverty Tour Very Very Good. Don't miss this link. Publisher: Poverty USA

Description: A video clip that takes viewers through a poverty simulation. It includes information about budgeting for poverty, including housing, transportation, food, and child care.

Food Research and Action CenterDescription: This Web site provides links to many articles and much information pertaining to childhood hunger, food stamps, food assistance, USDA food programs, and much more.

Hunger: Its impact on Children’s Health and Mental Health
Author: Linda, Weinreb; Cheryl Wehler; Jennifer Perloff; Richard Scott
Publisher: American Academy of Pediatrics, PEDIATRICS, Vol. 110 No. 4 (October 2002)
Description: This observational study involving 408 children examines child hunger and its impact on physical and mental health. Using standardized tools comprehensive demographic, psychosocial and health data were collected from homeless and low-income housed mothers and their children in Worcester, MA

Characterstics of Food Stamp Households: Fiscal Year 2001 (pdf)
Author: Tuttle, Chrisitina
Publisher: USDA (July 2002)
Description: This report profiles characteristics of food stamp recipients based on 2001 data. It includes composition of households, benefits and income. It contains national and state specific data.

How to Organize a Community Food Drive
Author: Franck, Louise
Publisher: University of Maine Cooperative Extension (1996)
Description: A fact sheet that illustrates the ways in which one can organize a food drive in the community.

Food for your Community: Gleaning and Sharing
Author: Hundhammer, Marjorie
Publisher: University of Richmond (2000)
Description: A fact sheet describing steps in setting up a crop gleaning hunger relief project.

Food Assistance Programs
Publisher: Food and Nutrition Service
Description: The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), formerly known as the Food and Consumer Service, administers the nutrition assistance programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The mission of FNS is to provide children and needy families better access to food and a more healthful diet through its food assistance programs and comprehensive nutrition education efforts.

Food Assistance
Publisher: North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension Services (1997)
Description: Chapter 13 in a manual that addresses community strategies to help families become self-sufficient. This chapter discusses issues associated with obtaining healthy food for low income families.

Rising food prices

2008-06-20T18:41:00.003-04:00

In June of 2007 the price of corn went up to a record $4.00 a bushel, up from 2.00 earlier in the year (story here). In June 2008 corn is pushing $8.00 per bushel driving up food prices to all time highs(story here). Wheat prices have risen 110% along with rice. The cost of food continues to rise while consumer wages remain same.

Hunger Defined

2008-06-19T23:51:00.000-04:00

Hunger is the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food; craving appetite. Also the exhausted condition caused by want of food.

Links to Modernization of Indiana Welfare System

2008-06-19T23:42:00.000-04:00

Finding the welfare balance

UPDATE: Residents angry at welfare

Welfare 'modernization'

Agencies to be at Muncie meeting May 06, 2008 12:17 am

Published: May 22, 2008 6:00 a.m. Welfare shift debuts under fire

Hundreds attend meeting to complain about new welfare system

Appropriate Responses to Hunger

2008-06-18T08:39:00.002-04:00

There are many things a church can do to help alleviate hunger in their community. I will list some resources and ideas and would encourage others to add comments of how hunger is being addressed in their community.

1. DO NOT START A FOOD PANTRY before counting the cost. Food pantries are difficult to sustain. They start off well, however, over time interest wanes and it is left in the hands of just a few people who easily become burned- out. The first step is to locate other food pantries in your community. Often they need help. It is easier to join and strengthen a food pantry than to start your own. If there are no pantries then consider starting one, however, try to enlist the help of several churches. A good place to learn how to start a pantry is here. You will also need regular set, posted hours of operation and some sort of screening process. We allow anyone to come once a month, keeping track on index cards.

2. Organize a food drive for an established pantry or your own, especially in the summer(in the fall food is plentiful due to holiday giving). Volunteer for postal carrier pick up.

3. Weekend back-pack program, where students receive a backpack full of food on Friday and return the backpack on Monday to be refilled. This outreach provides weekend nutrition. It is expensive and takes a good bit of labor. However, it is very doable if done in cooperation with other churches, businesses and organizations.

4. Open a personal pantry with items that cannot be purchased with food stamps. Include: Laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, toiletries, feminine hygiene supplies and of course toilet tissue.

5. Look into the possibility of starting an Angel Food Ministry. If there is already one in your community volunteer to help. Do all you can to promote it. Angel Food Ministry provides about 60 dollars worth of food to anyone for 30 dollars.

6. Go into low income neighborhoods and throw block parties. Put fliers in doors, fire up the grill and have a simple cookout with some games for kids. Most importantly, listen to the community, I guarantee they will talk.

7. Plan a CROP Walk.

8. Study hunger in your community. Find out how many students are on free or reduced lunches. What is the unemployment rate, poverty rate, how many are on TANF, food stamps etc.

9. Organize hunger awareness programs.

10. Support the Society of St. Andrew. Be aware of potato drops and volunteer to help.

7. Pray, Pray, Pray.