Cooking for the Community

Chef Terri Bartell-Cafazzo

This post is an important one.

We all have those special friends who make the world a brighter and better place. I first met Terri Bartell-Cafazzo way back in the 1970s when we were both college students. She’s always had boundless enthusiasm and a lot of energy. We’ve stayed in contact through all the years since, mostly with irregular emails and the annual Christmas card wrap-up. Along with treks and kayaking, teaching yoga and Zumba, Terri’s last Xmas letter mentioned that she cooks for a local women’s shelter in Prescott, Arizona.

On my last visit to the USA I was stunned by the tents and tents and tents and tents of the homeless EVERYWHERE I went on that trip. Programs to assist the needy had been gutted. And this doesn’t include the women trapped with their abusers thanks to COVID, or the job options they’d lost in the lockdown. I was beyond appalled. Clearly, people are suffering.

Then I remembered Terri’s letter. I asked if she’d let me interview her about the work she does at the shelter. She agreed, and I hope my readers will feel as inspired as I am by Terri’s work. We should try to be part of the solution.

What led you to cook for a shelter? I was introduced to providing meals for the local Women’s Shelter over a decade ago when the Prescott Unitarian Fellowship needed volunteers for their commitment to provide a dinner one day per month.

Providing a warm healthy dinner for women and children in need was a huge draw as I love to cook. I believe ‘you are what you eat’ so bringing heartfelt prepared food for individuals needing a sense of comfort in their life is exactly where I want to contribute to my community.

My continued involvement comes from a deep reward in the demonstrated appreciation from the residents of the shelter. I feel these women and children benefit in experiencing our contributions as positive role models in how community extends help to those who need it. That in itself is a strength which helps build the inner attributes needed to create a solid foundation in their lives.

How did you learn about the position? After becoming a round robin shelter meal volunteer through the Prescott Unitarian Church, it came to my attention that there were other days in the month when they had no coverage on a regular basis. I left the occasional Unitarian monthly date and became available for those holes in the meal schedule. I’m contacted at the end of the previous month about the dates and sign up for those that work in my schedule.

How great is the need for Women’s Shelters in your area? The need is great. We’re the only one of this kind providing temporary and emergency shelter in about a 100+ mile radius. First, women must apply. Once admitted to the program they’re given temporary overnight accommodations (4:00 pm-8:00 am) for 90 days with warm meals. They receive life skills resource case management to help them transition into a more permanent setting.

Did your interest tie in any way to the awful increase in homelessness in the USA? The increase in homelessness has grown. This shelter is a wonderful leg up to help women and their families move into a better lifestyle. Helping make our local communities a better place to live is the seed that it takes to grow a greater world. It starts in our own backyards.

In Prescott, many of these women and their children find themselves on the street or living in their cars for various reasons: lack of funds or job, physical &/or mental health issues, unforeseen life changes, domestic challenges, etc.

How many women can the shelter support? The shelter has a dormitory with cots and bunk beds including bedding for 19. Also, they have an annex for women who have young boys 12 years old or older. This organization opened February 2009, serving over 3,000 women and children, providing more than 105,000 bednights with an 81% transition rate to permanent homes.

Is the shelter funded privately or through donations? The Prescott Women’s Shelter is a non-profit backed by United Way, and many significant corporate and private donors with countless individual/local charitable contributors. Local realtors have stepped up to assist in helping find affordable housing for the women in the program.

Who owns the property? I’m not sure how the property is held in title. It has an active Board of Directors with an amazing committed paid and volunteer staff. It’s in a well-kept residential home that has been greatly remodeled to meet the needs of a shelter. During COVID, a variety of landlords donated the use of their rental homes to help create necessary separation while the shelter’s organization continued to serve our women and children. During that time, as Meal Providers we brought sealed store-prepared foods at a greater expense, dropped them off on the doorstep, and left after ringing the doorbell to alert the women the meals had arrived.

Do you have to work in secrecy? Women’s shelters are often at undisclosed addresses to protect women from their abusers. Discretion is key but there is a Facebook page and website with its location and services. It takes a cast of 1,000 to make this place happen on a daily basis so it is no secret. Men aren’t allowed in the facility without special clearance. Security measures are in place.

How often do you cook for them? I fill in the dinner schedule anywhere from 1-3x per month. Menus are affordable, balanced, and baked/presented in something recyclable/disposable so we don’t have to chase after our kitchen ware. We prepare food in our personal kitchens; this gives us the liberty of designing a menu, shopping and purchasing out of our own pocket for 20+ people. Meals are delivered by 5:30 pm that day. Since they don’t have onsite cooking facilities for liability reasons, everything has to be brought through the door ready-to-serve. We are considered an invaluable large portion of their services.

What do you cook? I try to share a main entree, salad, fruit, and dessert. Italian and Mexican cuisines seem to be what many Meal Providers bring. I like to mix it up in the summer with hoagie sandwiches, chips, pickles, coleslaw, jugs of apple juice, a clearance sheet cake from the bakery and watermelon when they are in season. Let’s not forget Swedish meatballs/pasta, Hungarian goulash, and sweet-n-sour Chinese stir-fry/rice. For a fun Saturday party splurge, I’ll make chili cheese fries with everything on them!! Watch out for the holidays as I like to add special napkins and seasonal favors. My list goes on…

How is the food donated? At times, friends have handed me a grocery gift card they won in a raffle. I’ve been gifted a giant bag of extra veggies from someone’s freezer. After a big potluck, people load me up with food to share with the shelter. I talked Walmart into gifting a sliced ham one year when I was in charge of Easter Dinner at the shelter!

Is your work connected in any way to a food bank? Most Meal Providers come from churches and philanthropic organizations. They bring meals from their own cupboards. Storage is paramount for my contributions. I have an extra refrigerator/freezer and shelf unit for can/dry goods in my garage that I’ve devoted just for the shelter meals. I purchase when I can get the best deals or buy something on clearance. It’s so worth it seeing the transparent looks of awe on so many of their troubled faces when these great smells and volumes of food come pouring onto the big community table. It noticeably makes their day a little brighter. You’re showered in songs of sincere ‘thank-you’ and ‘bless you’ as you leave through the door.

I can’t think of a better way to spend part of my time in retirement.

NOTES: ©2023 Jadi Campbell. There are 3 ways readers can contribute to the Prescott Shelter.

Online: https://prescottshelters.org/

Phone: 928-778-5933

Mail: Prescott Area Shelter Services

336 N. Rush St.

Prescott, AZ 86301

PS:Terri also taught classes at Yavapai College. She was recently honored at a catered gala for her 15 years of service!

Click here to read my post Food Bank  about Food For Lane County [FFLC] in Eugene, Oregon.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, The Trail Back Out and Grounded.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was  semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

 

Today’s Birthday: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was founded on December 14, 1950 to help millions of Europeans who had fled or lost their homes following WWII. In 1954, the UNHCR was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Their headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland. The work of the organization to protect and help refugees all over the globe is more vital than ever. You can donate by clicking on this link: Donate.unhcr.org

In honor of the work that the UNHCFR tirelessly does on behalf of our world, I am reprinting the post I wrote about why I decided to offer trauma massage for refugees. – Jadi

After more than a decade, it was back. An insidious, slowly increasing unease, a worried feeling that the world was spinning out of control. For months I’d watched news reports about refugees drowning off the coast in places like Libya or Lampadusa, Italy.

The reports came with more frequency, their tone more urgent. One night I saw the tragic footage of a small child, lifeless where he’d washed up on a beach in Turkey.

That Turkish beach is in Bodrum, and I once set foot there. Two years after I got married we spent a vacation in Turkey. Uwe and I began with the magic of Istanbul. We visited ancient Greek and Roman ruins, took off our shoes at the Blue Mosque, and travelled down the coast as tourists on a local bus line. At rest stops the driver came around with rose water for passengers to wash their hands and faces.

We bought rugs in Bodrum and had them shipped home. I joked about magic carpet rides. We put a wool rug I’d chosen in the center of our living room. Its wavy stripes had reminded me of the ribbon candy my grandparents always gave us when we visited.

IMG_7568

Now, when I looked from the television to the floor, I saw waves in a treacherous ocean. I saw the long voyage of those desperately trying to save themselves and their families from wars.

Images of bombs and flight began to haunt my dreams. I had trouble sleeping and for a while I stopped watching the news. It was too close. The borders between frivolous holidays and grim realities had blurred. Actually, they’ve never really existed to begin with.

I was slipping into a spiral of feeling overwhelmed, and helpless, and very sad.

A German friend came for her monthly massage. “I’ve begun volunteering with refugees here,” she said. We talked through much of the session and I asked question after question, curious to know how she came to the decision to help refugees. I began to rethink how to respond to my encroaching depression and what I could do.

I talked it over with Uwe. A few weeks later, I called the Rathaus (Town Hall) to offer my services.

NOTES: © 2015 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as Helping Refugees: Part One. I wrote an entire thread on helping refugees if you want to read further. Uwe’s images from our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out. Books make great gifts!

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was  semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

 

 

Why Food Banks Matter – Part Two

I’m reprinting my earlier posts on food banks as a response to the current world crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is Part Two.  – Jadi

Wall Mural FFLC
“Justice of Eating Produce Stand”

The first thing I noticed is that the food bank takes up an entire warehouse. Outside the front doors a lovely mural depicts people harvesting a garden for an old-fashioned produce stand. The next wall has a quote from Pablo Neruda.

The reception area has tall walls with high windows, metal filing cases and the ubiquitous, moveable office divider walls. Boxes in the gigantic pantries are stacked impossibly tall, 10-15 palettes high. Signs direct donors to head to Dock 1; at another dock, vans load food to be delivered to distribution centers.

IMG_5905
These boxes store all sorts of food goods, not bananas!

IMG_5915

Beverlee moved to Eugene from the Oregon coast where she was one of the humans  instrumental in releasing an orca back to the ocean (you know that story as “Free Willie”). She’s always loved community development work.

She says, “In the non-profit world you wear so many hats. You can be responsible for so many things. If I like coming to work, I certainly want my employees to enjoy coming to work… it’s a whole lot easier to manage an organization where folks are happy. It’s great to keep my finger on the pulse.”

Of the staff of 58, thirty-six employees are full time, and six of those are involved in fund raising and marketing. Many of the workers have been with the non-profit for 18-20 years. All are passionately committed to FFLC’s goals.

A typical employee “is a guy who had a really good job, great bennies, and a good salary. But it wasn’t meaningful work. So at a certain age he decided that he needed to change gears and do something more meaningful.

“It’s a paradox sometimes,” Bev says. “We have people working here who need our services. A liveable minimum wage is $15/hour. But all of our full time employees get health care and retirement benefits.”

Entry-level employees usually are young people (frequently part-time), working their way into careers. Other positions are filled by a highly educated group who usually hold graduate degrees and have an interest in non-profit management. Many are Peace Corps veterans or people with experience as volunteers. The 16 men who work in the warehouse are a range of ages, all of them interested in physical labor.

FFLC runs 13 food programs, each with a unique way of distributing food to the hungry. Most of the food bank’s 140 partner organizations are staffed by volunteers.

Bev wanted to know first-hand what it’s like to budget for food on a limited income. “The first thing that happens when people are strapped,” she said, “is they decide not to eat. They want to pay the bills and keep the roof over their heads.” Persons on food stamps provided by the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, feed themselves on what comes to $31.50 a week, or $1.50 a meal. Bev had to think ahead and prepare food all the time to make it work. She realized that “[a] person who has limited access to food by necessity spends a lot of energy trying to figure out how to meet that hunger.”

Former President Donald Trump attempted to cancel SNAP benefits for millions of Americans. [1]

Food For Lane County is Eugene’s most popular non-profit, and she hears stories every day about people who have been touched by their services. Bev volunteers at FFLC’s programs and especially loves FFLC’s restaurant. The Dining Room serves nightly free meals with a piano playing in the room, artwork on the walls, and newspapers to read. The homeless and the hungry are fed with dignity. Bev describes being there as “a Buddhist moment”.

I asked her for any last thoughts. She notes that America has no national discussion about hunger and poverty. People cared when the recession first hit, but events have moved on in terms of dialog or visibility. And in the meantime the problems of hunger and the hungry in the USA have worsened.

Before the afternoon ended I knew I was going to blog about Beverlee and Food For Lane County.

Beverlee Hughes, Executive Director, Food For Lane County
Beverlee Potter, former Executive Director, Food For Lane County

 ***

FFLC’s vision: To eliminate hunger in Lane County. Their mission: “To alleviate hunger by creating access to food. We accomplish this by soliciting, collecting, rescuing, growing, preparing and packaging food for distribution through a network of social services agencies and programs and through public awareness, education and community advocacy.”

facebook.com/foodforlanecounty. twitter.com/FoodForLC. youtube.com/food4lanecounty. email: info@foodforlanecounty.org

NOTES: *Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food. [1] As reported in December 2019, the Trump administration had ‘sought to tighten requirements for food stamps without congressional approval after Congress blocked a Trump-backed effort to pass new restrictions through the Farm Bill last year.’ (Reuters www.reuters.com) I’ve updated the link on food security: USDA Report on Food Security

Watch “A Place at the Table” with Jeff Bridges, about hunger in America. A Place at the Table

The facts in these two posts speak for themselves. The bald reality of hunger in  America is outrageous enough, and Putin’s war in Ukraine means that countries around the world face starvation.

Pablo Neruda Quote FFLC

Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as A Visit to the Food Bank, Part Two. Beverlee Potter has since retired. The amazing work of Food For Lane County continues. To learn more: https://foodforlanecounty.org/

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was honored as 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network and with a Red Ribbon by the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards of England. In addition, The Trail Back Out was an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, as well as a Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book Awards.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books. My main character in Tsunami Cowboys goes to the food bank.

 

Why Food Banks Matter – Part One

In light of the current food crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems like a good time to reprint my posts about food banks. I wrote this two-part post back in 2013. Since then, need brought on by food insufficiency has only grown more dire. May these posts give my readers food for thought.

– Jadi

Pablo Neruda Quote FFLC

I visited the Food for Lane County food bank while doing research for my second book Tsunami Cowboys. One character visits a food bank. It’s a brief scene, a couple pages. Easy enough. Nonetheless, the scene matters.

I spent hours trolling the Web for information. The back of my brain always insists, Get it right, Jadi. Then I remembered I actually know several people who work at non-profits… and I’d never visited a food bank. So, in the interests of research (and a wonderful excuse to see what a friend does all day) I made an appointment to interview Beverlee Potter (at that time Beverlee Hughes), Executive Director of Food For Lane County [FFLC] in Eugene, Oregon.

I thought I knew about the reality of hunger. Uwe and I travel to out-of-the-way places, and God knows we’ve seen poverty and malnutrition in countries and regions all around the globe. But the visit to FFLC brings it back home.

  • Fact: 20% of the U.S. population lives in poverty
  • Fact: 46 million Americans are on food stamps
  • Fact: The number of people needing services has tripled in a decade
  • Fact: 1 in every 5 people in Oregon is eligible for food assistance
  • Fact: Oregon State has highest rate of childhood hunger in the country (29.0%)
  • Fact: 30% of children in Oregon are food insecure *
  • Fact: 39% of Lane County residents are eligible for emergency food assistance
  • Fact: In some Lane County schools, 95% of all children are eligible for free or reduced cost lunches

What do you do with these facts? If you’re Beverlee, you get to work. She and her staff of 58 achieve an astonishing range of goals:

  • Emergency & Mobile food pantries (distributing just under 8 million lbs. of food/year)
  • Emergency Meal sites & shelters
  • 3 Child Nutrition Programs
  • Food Rescue Express & Fresh Alliance (distributing 1 million lbs. of food/year)
  • 2 gardens & a 6-acre farm that grow food & build self-esteem. FFLC hires at-risk kids and through internships teaches them teamwork, punctuality, customer services, etc. Daily lunches at the gardens teach people what freshly harvested produce tastes like.
  • Extra Helping, food for low-income housing sites
  • Rural deliveries
  • Delivery of once-a-month food boxes for low-income seniors
  • A farm stand outside PTA meetings where parents can pick up food as they leave
  • The Dining Room, the food bank’s sit-down restaurant in downtown Eugene, offering free 4-5 course meals. They serve up to 300 meals a night.
  • Shopping Matters, classes to teach people on limited budgets how to shop for food
  • Cooking Matters, free cooking & nutrition classes

 ***

Beverlee Potter has since retired. The amazing work of Food For Lane County continues. For more information: https://foodforlanecounty.org/

 

I’ll post Part 2  tomorrow.

NOTES: *Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food. Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell. Previously published as A Visit to the Food Bank, Part One. Keep in mind that the statistics on hunger cited here are from 2013.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was honored as 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network and with a Red Ribbon by the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards of England. In addition, The Trail Back Out was an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, as well as a Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book Awards.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books. My main character in Tsunami Cowboys goes to the food bank.

 

# 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 #

I always feel a little strange when I recognize it’s time to mark milestones and I have several to announce.

This is my 99th blog post.

I’ve posted in these virtual pages twice a month since I began way back in September of 2012. It all started with my husband’s suggestion that I establish an Internet presence….

My published books are fiction, and this blog serves as a good place to present excerpts. Potential readers of my books might want a sample of my writing and a glimpse of the human being behind the words. It’s also a place for non-fiction essays. I get to explore ideas and topics that don’t need to be transformed for novels. Posting every other week is great writerly discipline. I’ve never missed a bi-monthly posting date!

My topics bounce all over the place like gleeful ping pong balls. I’ve written about current events like The Death of Robin Williams, Helping Refugees: Part 1 and Tunisia Without Terrorism, to the World Cup in The Year the World Came to Party.

I occasionally write about historic events, too. Several are 8:15 A.M.Amsterdam, and Stolpersteine 1: Tsunami Cowboy’s Stumbling Stones.

I riff on artists in Meet the One-Tracks and art, like the sacred sublime in Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres or sacred sexual in The Erotic Architecture of Khajuraho. I profile art made by human hands Wine and Sculpture, Wildly Creative in Upstate NY: The Ferros of Little York, Egypt 1: We had the entire Valley of the Kings to Ourselves or found in Nature: The Music of the Heavenly Spheres, Steamy Rotorua! and It Was a Bitterly Cold -22°.

Art can serve as reminders to bring us together, as in Stolpersteine 1: Tsunami Cowboy’s Stumbling Stones and The United Buddy Bears.

Of course, I write about writers: My Sister & Maurice Sendak and Baum, Bats, and Monkeys. I quote my beloved Shakespeare with Egypt 2: Along the Nile. Even Colleen McCullough gets a mention in The Outback!

And I write about writing itself: The Gift of Gab, Someone Burned My Book.

Food has been a topic: My Mother-In-Law’s Cookies, Despair Is An Exotic Ingredient, Adventures in China’s New Territories 3: The 100-Pound Fish, Deep Fried and Served with Sweet & Sour Sauce, The Fork is Mightier than the Sword. A Blog Post in Which I eat Paris, The Salt Pits and A Visit to the Food Bank, Part 1 &  2.

Holidays have been fun, from You Rang? (the worst/best Valentine’s Day in history) to Happy Halloween!

My day job is as massage therapist, and sometimes I write about healing and medicine. Helping Refugees: Part 1,  Massage in Indonesia: Lombok, Adventures in China’s New Territories 4: The Gods of Medicine, A Massage at Wat Pho are a few of the posts.

…. and this all began simply as a way to introduce my two novels Tsunami Cowboys and Broken In: A Novel in Stories. Both are available at amazon.com in book and eBook form.

It’s been a fun journey these last three years! Thanks to all of you for visiting these pages. I wish everyone the happiest of holidays. I’ll be back in the new year with an announcement. Milestone #2 is on the way!!!

# 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99 # 99

The Human Dimension. Helping Refugees: Part 4

The Germans have a wry saying. “We sent for guest workers, but Menschen came instead.” Meaning that after WWII, the work force of foreigners who came to Germany turned out to be fellow human beings.

I find myself thinking about that saying. The flow of refugees heading this way is huge and overwhelming, and in some ways I am afraid. I love the security and safety of life here, how clean it is. I’m proud to live in a land with universal health care and great mass transit, wonderful street cafés, and (most important of all) the guarantee of personal freedoms and a firm commitment to human rights.

What does this have to do with the hordes of refugees flooding the country? I’m not sure. Maybe nothing at all. But I hear from some of my friends, “What if Europe becomes Muslim? What if the streets are filled next with women in full burkas? What if we lose our freedoms as Germans bend over backwards to accommodate the newcomers?

They’re nameless, faceless. They’re the others, the ones who constitute a vague but ever-growing threat.

One of my great bonds with the man I married is our desire to explore the world together. We’ve taken vacations in moderate Muslim lands. Every trip was wonderful, filled with people with dreams and hopes like yours and mine. I have a serious disconnect when I try to reconcile the horror of ISIS with the kindness of the friendly people we met in Egypt… Indonesia… Tunisia… Malaysia… Turkey… Singapore. The answer, of course, is they can’t be reconciled. The two have nothing to do with each other.

I’m terrified of the fanaticism that just killed more than 100 people in  Paris. The refugees are terrified, too. The people fleeing to Europe want the same things we do: a civilized place to work, live, and raise their children. A stream of humanity is arriving. People with dreams and hopes, like yours and mine.

Each time I go to massage the refugee M. [1], I’m confronted with my own fear of the unknown foreign.

We have no languages in common. I’m not only working without any knowledge of her history; we can’t even talk.  One of her children remains in the room the entire time to translate into German for her.

These are the hardest sessions I’ve ever attempted.

As a therapist my hands know their work; I’m capable to treat her PTSD symptoms. But the person-to-person connection…. I have to do this solely through touch. The afternoons of therapy have changed my understanding of the human dimension. It’s become more complicated, and much simpler. It’s changed me as well.

NOTES: [1] To respect the privacy of the persons involved I have changed the names and use initials only.

A Visit to the Food Bank, Part 1

Pablo Neruda Quote FFLC

I’m hard at work on my next novel. You’ll meet a psychotherapist with a fear of flying, cult members, and a woman with strange dreams. One character visits a food bank. It’s a brief scene, one page or maybe two, tops. Easy enough. Nonetheless, the scene matters.

I spent hours trolling the Web for information. The back of my brain always insists, Get it right, Jadi. Then I remembered I actually know several people who work at non-profits… and I’d never visited a food bank. So, in the interests of research (and a wonderful excuse to see what a friend does all day) I made an appointment to interview Beverlee Hughes, Executive Director of Food For Lane County [FFLC] in Eugene, Oregon.

I thought I knew about the reality of hunger. Uwe and I travel to out of the way places, and God knows we’ve seen poverty and malnutrition in countries and regions all around the globe. But the visit to FFLC brings it back home.

  • Fact: 20% of the U.S. population lives in poverty
  • Fact: 46 million Americans are on food stamps
  • Fact: The number of people needing services has tripled in a decade
  • Fact: 1 in every 5 people in Oregon is eligible for food assistance
  • Fact: Oregon State has highest rate of childhood hunger in the country (29.0%)
  • Fact: 30% of children in Oregon are food insecure *
  • Fact: 39% of Lane County residents are eligible for emergency food assistance
  • Fact: In some Lane County schools, 95% of all children are eligible for free or reduced cost lunches

What do you do with these facts? If you’re Beverlee, you get to work. She and her staff of 58 achieve an astonishing range of goals:

  • Emergency & Mobile food pantries (distributing just under 8 million lbs. of food/year)
  • Emergency Meal sites & shelters
  • 3 Child Nutrition Programs
  • Food Rescue Express & Fresh Alliance (distributing 1 million lbs. of food/year)
  • 2 gardens & a 6-acre farm that grow food & build self-esteem. FFLC hires at-risk kids and through internships teaches them teamwork, punctuality, customer services, etc. Daily lunches at the gardens teach people what freshly harvested produce tastes like.
  • Extra Helping, food for low-income housing sites
  • Rural deliveries
  • Delivery of once-a-month food boxes for low-income seniors
  • A farm stand outside PTA meetings where parents can pick up food as they leave
  • The Dining Room, the food bank’s sit-down restaurant in downtown Eugene, offering free 4-5 course meals. They serve up to 300 meals a night.
  • Shopping Matters, classes to teach people on limited budgets how to shop for food
  • Cooking Matters, free cooking & nutrition classes to begin in January 2014

 ***

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

* Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.

Photo Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell. (All photographs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.)

A Visit to the Food Bank, Part 2

Wall Mural FFLC
“Justice of Eating Produce Stand”

The first thing I noticed is that the food bank takes up an entire warehouse. Outside the front doors a lovely mural depicts people harvesting a garden for an old-fashioned produce stand. The next wall has a quote from Pablo Neruda.

The reception area has tall walls with high windows, metal filing cases and the ubiquitous, moveable office divider walls. Boxes in the gigantic pantries are stacked impossibly tall, 10-15 palettes high. Signs direct donors to head to Dock 1; at another dock, vans load food to be delivered to distribution centers.IMG_5899

IMG_5905
These boxes store all sorts of food goods, not bananas!

IMG_5915

Beverlee moved to Eugene from the Oregon coast where she was one of the humans  instrumental in releasing an orca back to the ocean (you know that story as “Free Willie”). She’s always loved community development work.

Bev says, “In the non-profit world you wear so many hats. You can be responsible for so many things. If I like coming to work, I certainly want my employees to enjoy coming to work…it’s a whole lot easier to manage an organization where folks are happy. It’s great to keep my finger on the pulse.”

Of the staff of 58, thirty-six employees are full time, and 6 of those are involved in fund raising and marketing. Many of the workers have been with the non-profit for 18-20 years. All are passionately committed to FFLC’s goals.

A typical employee “is a guy who had a really good job, great bennies, and a good salary. But it wasn’t meaningful work. So at a certain age he decided that he needed to change gears and do something more meaningful.

“It’s a paradox sometimes,” Bev says. “We have people working here who need our services. A liveable minimum wage is $15/hour. But all of our full time employees get health care and retirement benefits.”

Entry-level employees usually are young people (frequently part-time), working their way into careers. Other positions are filled by a highly educated group who usually hold graduate degrees and have an interest in non-profit management. Many are Peace Corps veterans or people with experience as volunteers. The 16 men who work in the warehouse are a range of ages, all of them interested in physical labor.

FFLC runs 13 food programs, each with a unique way of distributing food to the hungry. Most of the food bank’s 140 partner organizations are staffed by volunteers.

Bev wanted to know first-hand what it’s like to budget for food on a limited income. “The first thing that happens when people are strapped,” she said, “is they decide not to eat. They want to pay the bills and keep the roof over their heads.” Persons on food stamps provided by the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, feed themselves on what comes to $31.50 a week, or $1.50 a meal. Bev had to think ahead and prepare food all the time to make it work. She realized that “[a] person who has limited access to food by necessity spends a lot of energy trying to figure out how to meet that hunger.”

Food For Lane County is Eugene’s most popular non-profit, and she hears stories every day about people who have been touched by their services. Bev volunteers at FFLC’s programs and especially loves FFLC’s restaurant. The Dining Room serves nightly free meals with a piano playing in the room, artwork on the walls, and newspapers to read. The homeless and the hungry are fed with dignity. Bev describes being there as “a Buddhist moment”.

I asked her for any last thoughts. She notes that America has no national discussion about hunger and poverty. People cared when the recession first hit, but events have moved on in terms of dialog or visibility. And in the meantime the problems of hunger and the hungry in the USA have worsened.

Before the afternoon ended I knew I was going to blog about Beverlee and Food For Lane County.

Beverlee Hughes, Executive Director, Food For Lane County
Beverlee Hughes, Executive Director, Food For Lane County

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FFLC’s vision: To eliminate hunger in Lane County.

Their mission: “To alleviate hunger by creating access to food. We accomplish this by soliciting, collecting, rescuing, growing, preparing and packaging food for distribution through a network of social services agencies and programs and through public awareness, education and community advocacy.”

* Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security.aspx#.Ui3Z7X9INQ0

http://www.magpictures.com/aplaceatthetable/ “A Place at the Table” with Jeff Bridges is about hunger in America.

bhughes@foodforlanecounty.org

email: info@foodforlanecounty.org

facebook.com/foodforlanecounty

twitter.com/FoodForLC

youtube.com/food4lanecounty

Look for FFLC on Craig’s List

NOTES: The facts in this post speak for themselves. I didn’t need to editorialize or make many comments. The bald reality of hunger in  America is outrageous enough.

Pablo Neruda Quote FFLC

Photos Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell. (All photographs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image.)

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