January Blog about the Food Bank.

Volunteering at the Central Missouri Food Bank

by Lance Mallette

For Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service the MRCN staff volunteered at the Columbia Food Bank. We were to meet at 9AM at the Food Bank and volunteer until noon. I had been there only once before and was reminded of how many people the Food Bank serves. The Food Bank is the huge warehouse that distributes food to the various Food Pantries in the Columbia Area. The MRCN staff joined about 15 other volunteers and bagged frozen noodles from 800 pound boxes on pallets to smaller bags then re-boxed and stacked on a pallet for distribution. We took turns scooping, bagging, twist-tying and labeling. The Food Bank always accepts volunteers and I could tell some of the people that were there volunteering had done so regularly. They knew one another and knew where the break room was located.

The Food Bank is one of my favorite entities on the planet, as America has an excess of food, it frustrates me to see people being hungry or food insecure (not knowing where your next meal is coming from). The Food Bank is supposed to be used as an emergency food, for when food stamps run out or when the food budget gets compromised due to unforeseen expenses. As the economy continues to not recover, the Food Banks needs rise as more people have food emergencies/financial troubles. Americans have a funny way of dealing with the food insecurity and hunger in their nation. We generally say hunger does not exist in America and ignore the problem, or we blame the hungry for lacking the merit necessary to succeed and thrive in life. Food insecurity and hunger has drastic affects on kids. Normal cognitive and physical development is hinged on meeting daily nutritional requirements. I have always felt strongly that people deserve to be treated with dignity when in financial trouble, both adults and kids, and the Food Bank strives to do that for its clients. I encourage everyone to check out the links below, especially the Missouri Hunger Atlas.

This is a link to the World Health Organization’s Health Impact of the Global Food Security Crisis. http://www.who.int/food_crisis/en/index.html

This is a link to the Central Missouri Food Bank’s web site. www.centralmofoodbank.org

This is a link to see how your county is doing on the Food Security front. I really like this map! http://missourifamilies.org/mohungeratlas/counties/.

The UN FAO now estimates that about 1.02 billion people go hungry each day. That is about 1 in 7 globally. The UN goal is to eradicate hunger by 2025. Here is a link about this. http://www.un-ngls.org/spip.php?article1399.

This is another link about global food security. http://www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/index.shtml. The UN website is a good place to start research if anyone is interested.

Have a great February AmeriCorps!

Lance