Hunger

Addressing Hunger
by Rob English

I was only really hungry for a few brief hours in my life. I was eighteen years old, it was a Saturday, and shortly after dawn I and several male friends foolishly decided to climb up the 200-foot rock wall of the Niagara River gorge. This was an extremely dangerous thing to do – the wall was straight vertical with enormous jagged boulders along its base next to the rushing river. We climbed up for an hour or so until near the top we hit ground water soil which gave way whenever we tried to grasp it. Our upward climb was at an end. Also, being that the wall was vertical, we could not back down. We had no ropes or climbing equipment, no cell phones in those days, simple sneakers on our feet, and no one knew we were up there. There was nothing to do but move laterally for several hours until we reached a place where the bedrock cropped out onto dry land and we could finally go over the top onto hard soil and green grass. What with that long day of initially fun – and then desperate – climbing WITH NO BREAKFAST OR LUNCH we were a ravenous group of teenage boys when we finally hit the chow line at seven PM!

I’ll never forget how my empty stomach felt that evening; and today I cannot imagine being hungry on a daily basis! The body is miserable, the brain has difficulty juggling everyday thoughts along with survival panic. And yet, millions experience hunger or food insecurity every day in America. Fortunately some others appreciate the problem and work to alleviate it.

There are hundreds of food banks and tens of thousands of food pantries in America, and there is at least one good soul I know whose first errand every Saturday morning for the past twenty years has been to stop at his local big box grocery store and load his car with the cartful of soon-to-expire foodstuffs that the store’s personnel has prepared for him, which he quietly delivers to a local food pantry. I’d like to think that there are dozens like him all over the state.

On a large and complex scale in our area there is the Food Bank of Central New York (foodbankcny.org) with its giant regional footprint. Led by Executive Director Karen Belcher, her large staff works with volunteers to accept endless truckloads of fresh food and produce from generous, well-known, local stores and farms, and from drop-offs of boxed and canned goods from individuals. All of it is sorted and delivered to food pantries over a wide area of Upstate New York. The food bank also accepts cash donations and grants with which it can buy three times as much food for the hungry than you or I can with the same dollar.

So, at one end of the feed-the-hungry spectrum is the sophisticated food bank working every day, and at the other end is my thoughtful friend battling hunger on Saturdays, one cartful of food at a time.

IN BETWEEN these two approaches is an amazing organization (with which I volunteer) called The Solution to Hunger (thesolutiontohunger.org). Imagine New York’s Javits Center calling STH founder and President, Crystal Wolfe to say that it has 1200 salads but the meeting got postponed! Crystal will immediately contact her local network of food kitchens and outreach organizations to make sure that the still-fresh salads reach the mouths of hungry people. In the same way, STH acts as a charitable, on-the-spot broker for food, sox, toys, and toiletries for the needy. With the internet, the project has gone national: If a baker in Auburn NY makes 100 cinnamon raisin bagels but the client wanted multigrain, a simple notice placed on the STH website by the shop will alert all the partner organizations in the area that there are bagels available. Hungry people get nourished and the bagel shop gets a tax write-off and is protected by Good Samaritan laws. Today, any donor in any city in any US state can use the service. Learn more at its website.

As for me, speaking as someone who was truly hungry ONCE for a few uncomfortable hours let me give a heartfelt thank you to any and all who work to alleviate hunger wherever you are and however you do it. Also, I strongly recommend that if you should find yourself at Niagara Falls at any time, admire the cataract from the safety of its parks and don’t try to free-climb its gorge.

Image of woman delivering food on the subway provided by Rob English and taken from The Solution to Hunger website

Image of people preparing food parcels by Julia M Cameron from pexels.com

Rob English is a member of People for Animal Rights, a grassroots organization in Central New York.

Contact People for Animal Rights
PO Box # 401,
Cleveland, NY 13042
peopleforanimalrightsofcny@gmail.com
https://parcny.org/