Informative Essay: The Plain City Food Pantry

The way River City Food Bank works is that they open to the public from 11:30 am to 3:00 pm. They provide many services for single and multiple families. Anyone who lives in Sacramento and reports that they or their dependents are living at or below the federal poverty line are eligible to receive these benefits. This site relies on the help of volunteers from around the Sacramento area. The day I went to River City Food Bank, there were twenty volunteers on this site ready to help and assist. My role was

Above were ways that local groups assist people in their own communities. Participating in food drives in an excellent way to help. Bringing three or four cans of food to the local food pantry could potentially be a family’s dinner in the near future. This is also a great way to donate, as described earlier. If one is a student, there are many ways to volunteer (Handbook 125). One of these is by volunteering to help the Campus Kitchen Project which brings unused food from school campuses to those in the community who would benefit from it (Handbook 125). If someone is feeling particularly lead to be an aid to local hunger, one could hold a food drive for the local soup kitchen. This may seem ambitious, but completely possible keeping a few things in mind (Feeding America 12). Number one, make sure all details are panned out before it starts. Location, goals, volunteers, and donation criteria should be created pre-food drive to ensure organization throughout (Feeding America 14). Number two, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger suggests that one “make a list of what food items that you need most” (Handbook 16). One final step that is crucial for a successful food drive is to get in touch with schools, markets, churches, and farmers to ensure that the community is united in the food drive (Handbook 16). These steps are among several that would help someone hold their own local food drive. Holding a food drive or just donating food, effort, or money are all wonderful ways that a citizen can serve their

Specific Purpose: To inform the audience of the workings of the Houston Food Bank and the concepts discussed during the course which were demonstrated through our volunteer experience.

This particular article is written by Patricia A. Duffy who states that low income families use the food pantry for emergence assistance for food, aside from the traditional government programs; this article suggests that food pantries are heavily used for emergency food (Duffy). The article focuses more on lower income families instead of the homeless. It compares food stamp programs along with the food pantry to understand how they both tie in to one another. There are various statistics and interviews of those who participate in such programs across the nation.

During the break the volunteers asked us several questions. From what I gathered all of the volunteers also need the assistance of the pantry. Many asked us how they could help us, assuming we had fallen on hard times. I assured them they we were just there to help them and donate our time. Volunteers receive each goods in their boxes in return for their help.

On Tuesday, October 3rd Monica Banks, a Wake Forest Divinity School student and a co-founder of New Communion, shared her experiences about her career/field of study and how it began to intermingle with food. Banks first began her career with a degree in business leadership and management and opening approximately 40 restaurant venues. After years of experience, she was looking for something more in life. After pursuing nursing she felt her calling was in the pastoral field and specifically surrounded food and poverty. As a second year student at Wake’s Divinity School, Banks was required to complete a group project, which led her the idea of the mobile pantry—now new communion. Banks felt such a passion for this project that she completed a grant application to United Way, which was eventually granted for the interfaith mobile food pantry. Banks took

The Field Education Experience I chose Food bank/ Pantry, is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough food to avoid hunger. Food banks/ pantries are usually faith based operations. However, they can operate on a much larger scale, such as a warehouse (Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Raleigh, NC.). The warehouse act as a storage that holds large quantities of food for smaller agencies. Some of the smaller agencies are churches, schools, food pantries, homeless shelters, also soup kitchens just to name a few (www.foodbankcenc.org).

Howard Husock’s report “Turning Food Deserts into Oases – Why New York’s Public Housing Should Encourage Commercial Development” was published by the Manhattan Institute and selected for this reaction paper. The report tells us about the incentives offered in New York City (NYC) to provide access to fresh food for an affordable price in low-income neighborhoods. Husock also discusses the shortage of supermarkets in NYC, New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA’s) historical anti-commercial bias, NYCHA’s food deserts, changing NYCHA food deserts into oases, and the commercial rent revenue NYCHA could make from commercial development on NYCHA property.

Each of these organizations recognize that they rely heavily on volunteer and community support. The Food Bank and Inter-Faith Food Shuttle provide similar boots on the ground operations, while No Kid Hungry helps build awareness and support of childhood hunger and its prevalence in North Carolina.

Homelessness privations has been a huge problem in Fresno the last few years. Many of the homeless are individuals that have been laid off from jobs, veterans, drug addicts, and/ or individuals that simply do not want to better their lives. the city of fresno have begun to make laws to help decrease homelessness, however many are unhappy about it.

organization named Meals by Grace. The organization takes in food donations from local businesses and creates

The site that I chose for my service learning project was New Emergency Resource Agency located at 112 N 1st St, Ponca City, OK 74601. New Emergency Resource Agency (NERA) is a non-profit that receives a majority of their funding through grants. They can only afford to employ 3 full time individuals and rely heavily on volunteer participation. Their mission is “Giving people and hand up instead of a hand out” and they do this by providing a friendly serviced food bank (once every three months), financial assistance for utilities and rent, clothing, medication (antiseptic or antibiotic) and bus tickets. While there I did stocking and back stocking, I also aided patrons with their shopping by guiding them through the aisles and helping them discern

Gleaners uses essentially every social media platform to reach volunteers and donors. By just simply going on Gleaners’ website, one can see a link to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube, all of which use the same handles to ensure easy access: @GleanersFBIndy or Gleaner’s Food Bank of Indiana. Gleaners’ Facebook account has by far the most interactions topping out at just over 9,500 likes. Gleaners uses its Facebook primarily to post pictures of volunteers at its headquarters and at different events being held (Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana Inc.). Twitter is their second most followed platform with a total of 3,900 followers (@GleanersFBIndy). The Twitter account has a slightly different feel than the Facebook account because it focuses more on talking to followers and thanking different people and organizations that volunteer with Gleaners. Instagram has a very similar feel as Twitter, in the sense that the posts are almost identical. Instagram, however, only has around 800 followers, which is surprising considering the presence on Twitter and Facebook (@gleanersfbindy). Gleaners also has accounts on Linked In, Pinterest, and YouTube, but its presence is very minimal and the posts are very infrequent. Overall, Gleaner’s has a presence in the social media world that is still growing but is becoming very successful.

Forty Nine million Americans struggle to put food on the table and my family was one of them. We were forced to eat Maruchan’s on end, which at first, as an oblivious thirteen year old, thought this was luxury until our third day. The smell of shrimp soup was the smell of hell for us. School was our only escape

First I would like to talk about how I came across Second Harvest Food Bank and their purpose. I am a firm believer of fighting against world hunger, and back home I was big into volunteering at kitchens that served food to the homeless. I wanted to do something food related in New Orleans, so when I was searching online I came across the Feeding America website. I found out that Second Harvest Food Bank was located in New Orleans, so it was a perfect match. I signed up for a couple of shifts there to see how I would like it, and when I went in for the first time, it was exactly what I was looking for. Second Harvest Food Bank is part of Feeding America. It is a non-profit organization that provides food to surrounding parishes’ soup kitchens. The different type of things that get sent to Second Harvest Food Bank varies in all shape and sizes; it includes