FROM: Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America

As we start the New Year, I want to thank you for your generous support of Feeding America.

Please take a moment to watch this short video, and see for yourself the staff and clients of Feeding America who are thankful for your support.

Thank you for helping us strive toward our vision of a hunger-free America.

Instead of another tie or bathrobe, why not give your friends and loved ones a chance to help Feeding America feed people facing hunger this holiday season and throughout the year? *

Give a Meal gives holiday shoppers a chance to support a great cause by helping provide food to the nearly 49 million Americans who struggle with hunger. Every $1 donated to the Give a Meal campaign helps provide eight meals to people in need.

“The holidays are a perfect time to give a gift that can make a difference in someone’s life,” said Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America. “With Give a Meal, even a small donation will go a long way in helping make sure that people have something to eat this holiday season.”

Bank of America is the campaign’s signature partner and for every $1 donated via FeedingAmerica.org/BankofAmerica, the bank will contribute an additional $2, up to a total match of $500,000. This is in addition to a one million dollar contribution to Feeding America.

“With one out of six Americans struggling to find their next meal, ensuring that vulnerable populations have access to basic needs such as food is a critical component to revitalizing our nation’s economy,” said Kerry Sullivan, President, Bank of America Charitable Foundation. “In response to this crisis, nonprofit organizations like Feeding America play a crucial role to help individuals and families gain stability through vital programs and services, which ultimately strengthens communities across the U.S. This holiday season, we are thrilled to partner with Feeding America once again to help feed those at risk of hunger.”

Emmy Award winning talk show host Rachael Ray serves as the first celebrity ambassador for the campaign. Her Yum-o! Organization has committed a matching grant to Feeding America’s Produce Program in conjunction with the campaign.

“My Yum-o! Organization has been a part of the fight against childhood hunger in America since 2007. We are honored to support Feeding America’s campaign to ensure that millions of hungry kids have access to nutritious food,” Ray said. “This holiday season, give the gift of food and make it possible for Feeding America to provide meals to people struggling to put food on the table.”

Rachael Ray’s match will help provide fresh fruits and vegetables to Americans struggling with hunger. For every donation to Give a Meal, her Yum-o! Organization will make a donation to Feeding America’s Produce Program, up to 2 million servings of produce.

Give a Meal is also being backed by Feeding America Entertainment Council members, including Chef Mario Batali, host of ABC’s The Chew, Australian chef and television star Curtis Stone, rock sensations Benji and Joel Madden, Entertainment Tonight correspondent Samantha Harris, Grammy Award winning singer Monica, Food Network star Ellie Krieger, chef and TV host Sara Gore, TV food critic and host Katie Lee, and the platinum selling band OneRepublic.

The issue of hunger is especially critical during the holiday season when the need is particularly acute. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that nearly 49 million Americans are facing hunger. Of those, more than 16 million are children – or more than 1 in 5 children are at risk of hunger in this country.

Bank of America’s support is part of an ongoing effort to address critical economic and social issues in the communities it serves through the bank’s Gift for Opportunity™ fund, established to extend the impact of customer and employee donations made to help address the growing demand for food assistance in both large and small communities during a critical time of the year.

Along with Bank of America, a number of other corporate partners have agreed to team up with Feeding America to fight hunger this holiday season. Corporate leaders such as Dillard’s, HMSHost, HoneyBaked Ham, and Winn-Dixie have all also joined the Give a Meal effort and are partnering with their customers to donate meals this holiday season.

You can check the status of this campaign by going to the running counter displayed on the Give a Meal webpage which has a running tally of number of meals that have been donated for the Give a Meal campaign.

“Fighting hunger requires a strong partnership between charities, businesses and individuals alike,” Escarra said. “Hunger is simply one battle we cannot afford to lose.”

LukewarmLegumes proudly supports Feeding America and its efforts to eliminate hunger in the United States. Please join us this holiday season and give the gift of meals for the hungry through the Give a Meal campaign.

* To give a gift in honor/memory of someone else visit the Feeding America website and check the box at the bottom of the page.

We write this blog because we love food and all things connected with it, as you can tell from the variety of articles you find here at Lukewarm Legumes. But Tiffany, Tim, and I are also very community minded. Combining our love for all things food and our community mindedness, we decided to partner with Feeding America, a well established and highly respected nonprofit organization dedicated to relieving hunger in the United States. Although we say ‘America’ where we are really talking about is the United States.

Yes, we are talking about the United States, the land of plenty. Normally when we in the United States hear someone speaking of hungry people, we think they must be talking about some third world country. But hunger is a significant issue for many people right here in the United States, right in our own back yards.

I work with a nonprofit organization in Houston, Texas which has programs to help low income individuals & families and our offices are located in the poorest part of the city. For this area especially, hunger is no stranger. But neither is it a stranger to the greater Houston area.

Did you know that hunger may not be a stranger to your community either? You can find out about hunger in your area by using a very helpful resource available on the website of Feeding America. After visiting this site I learned that the food insecurity rate for my state (Texas) is 17.8%. For my county (Harris) the food insecurity rate is 18.1%. But what is worse, food insecurity is even greater when only children are measured, which jumps to 27.2% for Harris County. That’s well over 1 in 4 children in my area who are food insecure.

“What is child food insecurity and what does it look like in America? Food insecurity refers to the USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Food insecure children are those children living in households who are experiencing food insecurity.” (from the Feeding America website)

Feeding America partners with Food Banks all across the country, 202 of them in all. These Food Banks and Feeding America partner to: secure food; raise funds; distribute food; share best practices; and advocate & inspire.

The Food Bank partner with Feeding America for the Houston area is The Houston Food Bank. Through their network of almost 500 hunger relief agencies and programs, The Houston Food Bank feeds more than 137,000 people a week.

This past weekend through the introduction of a contact at Feeding America, I was the guest of The Houston Food Bank for a special event. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, HoustonPBS and Walmart held a community screening at the Houston Food Bank, to showcase a PBS primetime television special called Growing Hope Against Hunger and provide educational opportunities for families around the issue of hunger in America.

Growing Hope Against Hunger introduces a new Muppet named Lily whose family has an ongoing struggle with hunger and features Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams Paisley. Highlights of the video are available on YouTube.

Organizations like Feeding America and The Houston Food Bank as well as programs like the new PBS Sesame Street special Growing Hope Against Hunger are helping raise awareness about food insecurity and doing a lot towards eliminating it in the United States, but there is still a lot that needs to be done. They can’t do it alone; You can help.

We at Lukewarm Legumes encourage you to learn about food insecurity in your area.  We also encourage you to contact your local food bank and get involved. You can locate a food bank near you on the website of Feeding America.

You could also visit the website for Feeding America and the PBS website Growing Hope Against Hunger to learn more then arrange to have an awareness meeting at your work, club, or place of worship about the issue of food insecurity.

Finally, we encourage you to consider things you can do to help eliminate food insecurity such as are listed on the blog Planned Resilience.

The 11 things you can do to eliminate food insecurity in America from that blog are:

• Call and/or write your senator/congressman/governor/ the president, etc., and tell them how important you think this problem is.  Over the past few decades, programs to help feed children and those in need (e.g., WIC, food stamps, free school lunch programs) have been gutted by the powers that be.  Maybe it’s time to get some of those back.  Feeding kids (and providing them medical care and an education) is one of the most important things we can do to ensure a bright future for this country.
• Volunteer at your local food bank.
• Donate canned goods (and/or cash) to your local food bank.
• Support homeless programs (e.g., state and local, secular and religious).
• Plant an extra row or two of veggies in your garden for the hungry (e.g., the food pantry).
• If you know someone who is food insecure, or just having difficulty due to illness, a death in the family, loss of work, arrival of a new baby, or what ever, make a freezable meal and take it over to them.  Ask if you can help them in other ways.  For example, buy them a weeks worth of groceries.
• If you know someone who would like to learn how to garden, invite them to your garden and teach them.  Share some land with them if they don’t have any.  Give them your extra seeds, or garden tools that still work but you don’t use.
• If you know someone who doesn’t know how to cook, invite them over and teach them.  Teach them how to fix a meal and then share it with them.
• If you know someone who would like to learn to preserve food, invite them over and teach them.  Send them home with preserved food.
• If you see a homeless person on the same street corner on your way to work (e.g., frequently), make it a habit of making them a sack lunch (breakfast, dinner, snack, etc.) and give it to them.
• Support organizations like Feeding America and The Houston Food Bank.