Dr. Karen Beiser of Rocky Mountain College is spearheading this year’s inaugural event in Billings, with the aid of dozens of area architects, engineers, and faculty members and students from Rocky’s rival down the street, Montana State University Billings.
“Both colleges within a few days of each other approached us to do this project and we’re just delighted that the two universities are doing this as a team effort,” said Sheryl Shandy, executive director of the Billings Food Bank. “Hunger and homeless are never a turf issue.”
Dr. Beiser is an adviser and teacher for SIFE, Students in Free Enterprise, at RMC. One of her former students approached her in early December and suggested she look into the competition.
“I’d never heard of it before,” she said.”I went to Canstruction.org and thought, we can do this! So I started the process of looking into it. We had to get the charter from the national organization. My class purchased the right to do this.”
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Canstruction has been in existence for nearly two decades and raised around 10 million pounds of food during that time to fight hunger. There are more than 140 cities in the United States and Canada participating this year, including Great Falls and Missoula, which are representing Montana.
A single Canstruction project can consist of thousands of cans of food, up to 5,000 in some cases, to produce life-size images such as sailboats, panda bears, a giant globe, and even a portrait of the president of the United States. Here at home, the theme is a conventional one.
“You won’t believe the crazy things people have built,” Dr. Beiser said. “But we are suggesting a Montana or Billings theme. We want to keep it home-focused in that sense for this year.”
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Ms. Shandy averages the retail value of each full-size can of food at about $1. “For us, that converts to 2,000 meals that can be provided,” she said. “It converts to a lot of meals. It’s a lot of boxes of food going out to families.”
"It's been a real eye opener into how quickly we're losing ground," said Pat Rogers, director of Feeding America Tampa Bay, a food bank for food banks. Food stamps and Agriculture Department supplements fill 90 percent of the dietary needs of the jobless and working poor. But an informal network gathers food for the other 10 percent in soup kitchens, shelters and church food pantries.
Collections cover only half the demand for the 50,700 people in the 10 counties surrounding Tampa Bay who get emergency food weekly.
One myth: Emergency food feeds the homeless. In fact, the homeless make up only 19 percent of the 409,000 people who got emergency food last year. Twice as many are families; 150,000 are children.
Feeding America is part of a national network that gathers food donated by manufacturers. One problem: Donations of overproduction, scratch-and-dent goods and products stocked close to their sell-by date declined as food industry distribution grew more efficient.
So on top of canned and dry goods, Feeding America locally added perishables to its service to get more protein. The nonprofit reorganized to gather produce and day-old baked goods from a growing list of chains from Aldi to Walmart.
The grocers stepped in after Mike Vail, president of Sweetbay Supermarket, took over as chairman of Feeding America's predecessor in 2002. It's an uneasy transition for wary food bank clients. Some balked at paying 5 to 18 cents a pound for donated food to offset transportation costs.
"This is a crisis," says Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America. "People need to understand that this is America, and we're seeing this kind of need." She says the report is her group's most comprehensive study on emergency food distribution.
It comes as a record number of Americans are receiving food stamps — 33.7 million last year — and as President Obama, who has set a goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015, proposed in his budget Monday to add $1 billion annually to school-based food programs.
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The Agriculture Department reported in November that 14.6% of households didn't have enough food at some time in 2008.
Feeding America based its report on 61,000 interviews with people seeking food aid and 37,000 surveys of food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters and other programs affiliated with Feeding America food banks.
More than a third of those interviewed said they had to choose between food and other necessities, including rent, utilities and health care. The average monthly income of households seeking help, $940, is below the $1,214 federal poverty level for a two-person household.
"Our system is overburdened," Escarra says. She says companies, individuals and the federal government have increased donations, but food banks are still struggling to keep up with demand.
The line wrapped around the parking lot of the food bank as officials expected to give food to about 900 families during the December distribution at its Duquesne warehouse. Typically, 500 to 700 families show up for the monthly distributions, said spokeswoman Iris Valanti.
"People get strapped not just because of the holiday, but also heat bills," Valanti said.
The number of people in Southwestern Pennsylvania in need of food this holiday season is up 30 percent from last year, officials estimate. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which serves 11 counties in the region, is assisting about 100,000 people monthly. Each month, between 1,500 and 2,000 new households sign up for assistance, Valanti said.
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Feeding America, a national hunger relief organization that has been providing meals for 30 years, served more than 2.6 billion pounds of food to the hungry this year.
"This is the worst it's ever been," said Ross Fraser, spokesman for the Chicago-based organization. "Four years ago was a walk in the park compared with what we're going through now. All of the country is hurting."
Fraser said the hardest hit areas in the country include Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Florida.
"This is the first time in our 30 years that we have faced the problem of shutting down," said Executive Director, Julius Littman. That's a big change, considering that at one point, Stop Hunger handed out more than 550 thousand meals a month.
So how could this food bank that serves so many of South Florida's hungry now be facing closure?
Arnold Jean Baptiste of the Children's Services Council, who sits on Stop Hunger's board, explained, "The individuals that used to donate to Stop Hunger now are looking to Stop Hunger in order to survive. The donations they used to get have now gone down; they are working hard to get more food and keep the service going."
With more families lining up for food and a decrease in donation, many sacrifices have been made.
"Our volunteers are working full time and getting paid for half time," said Fox.
But it's a sacrifice that many at Stop Hunger are willing to make, because many of them once turned to Stop Hunger for help themselves; it's something volunteer Seven Rosario knows all too well. "It's always good to have a helping hand, they've helped me and now it's my turn to help someone else," Rosario said.
In El Monte, the pantry at Our Saviour Center has seen a daily increase of about 43 percent, according to Dorris Dann, director of volunteers. The center serves 180 to 300 people a day, compared with about 145 people a year ago.
"Some days, the people never seem to stop coming," Dann said. "It's really telling when they open the bag of food before they get out of the parking lot to feed their children."
In Orange County, demand has gone up 30 percent to 35 percent. Even people from more affluent neighborhoods have had to turn to food pantries, said Joe Schoeningh, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.
"All is not bleak, although it is very difficult to make ends meet at this point," Schoeningh said.
One bright spot is that Americans continue to give, even during tough economic times, and that has helped food pantries struggle through, he said.
Food donations are still needed. Donors and volunteers can visit www.lafoodbank.org to find out how to help, Flood said.
Maria Bermudez has been coming to Our Saviour Center's pantry for five years. She cleans homes and her husband does construction, but work has been scarce, she said. At times, they don't have enough food to get through the week, Bermudez said.
"It is a great help," she said. "When we come here, we get food for a couple of days."
The local gleaning program was started by Salvation Army staffer Maddy Graham to supplement food boxes given to needy families who too often rely on fast food and discount retailers for high-fat, high-sugar foods that can lead to health problems.
The volunteer pickers get financial assistance and a box of oranges in exchange for working once a week.
Negrete said his kids devour the oranges.
"When they're sweet like this, they're better than candy. And better for their teeth," he said in Spanish, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Elsewhere, the Society of St. Andrew, a national gleaning organization, recruits volunteers from churches, scout troops and schools to pick sweet corn in Florida, collards in South Carolina, potatoes in Colorado and apples in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
"Fresh produce is expensive and it spoils quickly," spokeswoman Carol Breitinger said. "But fresh fruits and vegetables are essential to people's diets."
The pantries of many food giveaway programs are stocked with packaged goods and caloric filler foods such as pasta because those products are cheap and easy to ship and store, she said.
Meanwhile, perfectly good produce that could balance those offerings sometimes rots in fields because of cosmetic flaws or high shipping costs.
"I can remember going into a cabbage field on the eastern shore of Virginia to pick after the harvest," Breitinger recalled. "There were thousands and thousands of pounds of perfectly good cabbage."
Gleaners step in when community-minded farmers give them the run of their fields after crews of paid pickers have already passed through, or when cosmetic damage caused by pests or weather makes harvesting and shipping the produce a money-losing proposition.
In exchange, farmers get a tax credit and the satisfaction of knowing their hard work didn't go to waste.
Sgt. Dwaine Coverson stands outside the back door of a Wallingford office building, cracking sunflower seeds as he talks about a new part-time job that’s a sign of bad times in Seattle.
Coverson is retired. He spent 29 years with the Seattle police force and says he’d rather be golfing. But three days a week, he shows up at the FamilyWorks Food Bank and Resource Center to keep things orderly in the line — and break up fights.
Thursday before last, Coverson says, he had to break up a fistfight that erupted in the building’s lobby, then separate another set of combatants who were pepper-spraying each other outside the back door. The same day, he says, Seattle police were called after a man threatened one of the workers at the Seattle Public Library branch that shares the building at 45th Street and Woodlawn Avenue.
Over the winter months, says FamilyWorks Director Jake Weber, incidents like these shot up, leading staff to feel unsafe and the food bank and its upstairs landlord —anti-poverty agency Solid Ground (the former Fremont Public Association) — to hire Coverson in January. Though he’s retired, he maintains his certification to wear the uniform, which comes with full police powers and a 9mm Beretta handgun that make him a curiosity to three small children staring through the glass in the lobby.
At least a few food bank clients say they find the officer unnecessary and intimidating. But FamilyWorks isn’t alone. As the recession and layoffs have driven more people to food banks citywide — the individuals served by FamilyWorks skyrocketed 80 percent last year, from 1,937 in 2007 to 3,405 in 2008 — lines, wait times and angst about getting the day’s best pick of food have increased. This has led to jostling and altercations at some facilities, particularly those where clients spend hours waiting outside or in cramped quarters.
To quell incidents, Northwest Harvest’s Cherry Street Food Bank on First Hill hired three security guards in early April. And after negotiating a “good neighbor agreement” with nearby residents, the Ballard Food Bank hired a security guard two years ago and, in March, chose to shut down its meal program at Calvary Lutheran Church over behavioral issues.
The Cherry Street Food Bank set an all-time record in April, serving 2,651 people in a single day, says Claire Acey, a spokesperson for Northwest Harvest. That compares to an average of 1,800 clients a day last year. On the busiest days, and toward the end of the month as disability and Social Security checks run out, Acey says, people will start lining up around 6 a.m. for the food bank’s opening at 9 a.m.
People seeking help at ECHO on Tuesday might have helped others.
Clients looking for food or emergency lodging were asked to take the 82-question Hunger in America survey.
The nationwide survey is taken every four years to measure how much food assistance available to low-income people, said Gina Wilson, director of agency relations at Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin.
The information will be used “by advocates, legislators and people who are trying to secure more funding for assistance for people who need help with food,’’ she said.
“We learn a good bit in the client interviews about what client circumstances are,’’ she said.
The information is kept confidential.
“We will not share information about you with anybody else, including this agency, and the information you give will not be used to determine your eligibility for benefits from any program,’’ according to a copy of the survey.
Certainly, Sparrow Services is doing great work by feeding the hungry. Yet perhaps what is most unique about it is who these hungry people are.
“We don’t get many transients any more,” Keith Dickerson said, “where we just give them some popup cans of Vienna sausage or some chili.”
Instead, Sparrow Services receives people who live in Lake Oswego. Not down-and-outers, but people who not long ago were well off and who often still live in fine homes. But in these times they are going hungry.
“There’s a big demand in Lake Oswego,” Keith Dickerson said. “I’ve pastored in Illinois, Minnesota, and Georgia, and our food ministry in Lake Oswego is different from anywhere else. Hungry people here are in the stealth mode. They want to be anonymous, and we often find out about them from a neighbor or co-worker.
“Sometimes people who need food the worse are the last ones to let you know. They’re meek and quiet and appreciative. They come in softly and leave gratefully. They are people in great need.
“Approaching them is an art, it’s a different dance. You can’t do it brazenly but quietly. The art is giving them the permission to take what the community has for them.
“Some live in nice homes, but they’re tax assessment poor. Sometimes they short themselves on things they need.
“These are people now having to say to themselves ‘I could go hungry.’ That’s been an awakening for us.”
There have been food pantries in South Africa for years, but the national food bank network is new. Forney described conditions in South Africa that make us realize our good fortune.
He said unemployment is 40 percent and that's not counting the people who have just given up.
Stuart McPherson, with the Food Bank in Cape Town, South Africa, said the country needs to feed 6 million refugees who have streamed in from neighboring countries.
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Forney said the government has a defined role in operating the regional food banks in the country along with private citizens and business.
He predicted that in the next couple of years, the country will have the fifth or sixth largest food bank network in the world.
He said the South Bend food bank is a good place for the group to visit because the country has many cities the size of South Bend and rural areas like much of the six counties the South Bend food bank serves.
The Food Bank of Northern Indiana works with almost 200 agencies that provide food for people in need.
