i was asked by Unilever & SheKnows Hatch to share some words about hunger in our communities. i watched their videos and looked through their websites and i was immediately aware of how uninvolved my family was.
please watch:
i have so many intentions of helping but life is busy.
i have a busy family life… my husband and i both work… our kids are in activities everyday… we have so many things to do…. does this sound familiar?
as i watched those videos or stop & think for just five minutes about hunger in my community, it breaks my heart.
no matter how “busy” i am i know that i need to take action… and so do you.
but WHERE do we start? WHO do we ask? WHAT is the need?
i started simple.
i texted my friends….”hey… i am writing a post about local hunger/poverty, ways to help out, getting involved and talking to our children about those issues… any suggestions?”
i loved hearing their thoughts!
they had all kinds of suggestions of kindness that weren’t just hunger focused:
– run in a race that supports a good cause
– donate to the Angel Tree throughout the Salvation Army at christmas
– pay for the family behind you at the drive through
– join an organization called Circles, USA
– bring a dish to a community meal
– volunteer at a homeless shelter
– have a simple meal of rice & donate the money you would’ve spent on your meal to a food bank.
– leave a treat for your mail man
– visit elderly neighbors
– talk to the new kids at school
– invite people over who may not have a place for the holidays
– “adopt a family” for the holidays by giving a meal or gifts
– donate food and gifts to your community center
– donate to the food bank (food or money)
– volunteer at the food bank
– join meals on wheels
– volunteer or donate to your local clothes closet
– call the local schools and ask how to help
doesn’t that list just get you excited?!!
i had never been to our county food bank.
and i will be honest… i just never put much thought into it.
i didn’t even know where it was.
i called and asked all kinds of questions.
and the bottom line of our conversation was “just do something”
so we did.
i talked with annie about what a food bank was and why we have one.
i asked her to come shopping with me for items we could donate.
we talked about what it might be like to not have any food or enough food for a thanksgiving dinner.
But then we decided to get foods that someone could make a thanksgiving meal with.
i had her write a list for the store. 🙂
we also added other items that seemed like a good idea not thanksgiving related.
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we each got a cart and i let her do all the shopping for her list.
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annie mentioned several times “this one is on sale”.
i loved seeing her take notice of that.
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we asked our store to bag her groceries separately and
then we drove it straight from the store over to the food bank.
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it was easy.
but you don’t have to shop! You can donate food right out of your own pantry.
my encouragement to you is: just do something!
Call the organizations in your community and say “what do you need and how can i help”
get involved.
share.
donate.
give.
love.
Project Sunlight and Project Hatch are working on the fight against child hunger right now.
they gave great suggestions on how to get started if you feel a little stuck.
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go to the Project Sunlight website to learn about all of these options.
About SheKnows’ Hatch, the Hatch Hunger Project and Unilever Project Sunlight:
SheKnows’ Hatch teamed with Unilever Project Sunlight to help families build awareness and take action around child hunger in America. The facts are startling: 16 million kids living in the United States don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That equates to one in every five children – enough to fill 18,000 school buses and 223 football stadiums. On average, those who live in food-insecure households have only $36.50 to spend on groceries every week. That means that 80 percent of children may not understand the everyday struggle their peers – many of whom could be their own friends or neighbors – confront when there’s not enough food on the table. The Hatch Hunger and Project Sunlight video and workshop aims to create empathy by showing kids what it means to shop for healthy, filling meals for an entire week on a thrifty budget. It teaches important math and teamwork skills. Finally, it is about action, empowering kids to have a positive impact on their community to Share A Meal with a family in need and donating food and canned goods to local food banks.
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will you share with me ways that YOU are already involved in your communities?
i would LOVE more ideas of ways to help!
every little thing adds up to a lot of BIG things when we are stepping up in kindness.
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patty - I am a 4-H leader. About 10 years ago our State 4-H project was called Massachusetts 4-H cares about the community – and we were charged with doing something to donate food to a food bank. Some clubs fundraised, put tubs to collect food at local grocery stores. Our club (the kids) raised money during the year and chose to spend $500 doing something, so we decided lets just split up the money and take the kids shopping.
This is our clubs FAVORITE field trip each year. No one misses it, even on a busy Thursday night. We give each kid $30-$50 dollars in an envelope, and send them off in groups of 2-4, and tell them to purchase things that if their family had to go to the food bank, they would want to choose.
It is FASCINATING to see how they arrive at what to buy. Some groups use a calculator to budget and buy store brand. Some buy healthy food. Some buy Starbucks coffee and cheese doodles because even at a food pantry there should be some specials (the teens ; )). Afterwards we weigh it and divide it to be delivered to towns that our members come from — the go for pizza where we talk about how they chose things and methods of budgeting and shopping.
This year a family from our county lost their home to fire and were starting over so we chose to donate to filling their cupboards. The kids sent 496 lbs. of food to this family who then decided to split it with another family whose house burned down on the same night.
Sorry for being so wordy, but honestly this is the most fulfilling community service project — it is so REAL to the kids and shows them that helping someone else can be thoughtful, fulfilling and most of all a FUN thing to do with their friends and family for their community. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy holidays to you all ; )
Erin Ussery - Loved this post! Thank you for sharing about your trip to the food bank with Annie. It’s so cool when our kids get into giving back!
Our church Life Group was challenged to complete a service project in the Spring. We spoke to a local school social worker who pointed us in the direction of school uniforms. In our town, the public schools have uniforms (basic pants and different colored shirts for each school), which is great! When you can afford them. So we hosted a two week fundraising drive and raised enough for 244 shirts, 170 pairs of shorts and over 50 packs of underwear! So in the summer we decided to file as a nonprofit in our state and go BIG. We named our group Lowcountry Dress for Success. This Fall we completed our second drive which raised $16,549 in THREE WEEKS! How it works: People donate online or by check in the mail (the Flinstone method), we partner with local social workers in the school who tell us what sizes and colors they want, we order it, pay for it, and deliver them to the schools for the social workers to deliver them as they see fit. God has provided in amazing ways! It has been awesome to see our community come together to take care of its own. We started our third drive this week called the HO-HO-HOodie Campaign. $15 purchases a full zip fleece hoodie that adheres to the school dress code and will keep a child warm this Winter. Feel free to read more about it at http://www.lowcountrydressforsuccess.com
Can’t wait to read about what others are doing! This is awesome!
stacey - We volunteer at a local toy drive where parents come get toys for their kids because they cannot afford to buy presents for them. The toys are donated and all new.
Flower Patch Farmgirl - You know I love this.
Kathleen W. - My kids and I just went and helped to fill bags with food for our schools backpack program, Falcon Pack. It was a great experience for my kids to realize that not everyone has enough food to eat over the weekend and that these backpacks provide meals on the days kids aren’t at school. We plan to go and help again. On another note, my son’s Cub Scout pack is having a baked goods auction next week. The scout families donate baked goods, auctioneers volunteer their time and we raise money for the elementary schools “Warm and Fuzzy Fund”. The money helps families in our school to provide Christmas for their kids. Great post Meg !
Michelle - I take $20 from every paycheck and shop for my community food pantry. I alternate food one week, toiletries the next week.
Call and ask your food pantry exactly what they need. Mine has enough peanut butter and dried pasta to last through the apocalypse, but is always in need of paper towels and toilet paper (things you can’t buy with SNAP). Paper towels may sound like an unnecessary luxury, but when you have to choose between buying food or doing your laundry at a laundromat, not having to wash kitchen towels or cleaning rags can mean one less load of laundry and a little more food in the shopping cart.
kare - I lead a guild which makes blankets for pediatric hospital patients called “Katie’s Comforters Guild” at Seattle Children’s Hospital. We don’t raise funds; we raise new quilts and blankets, made of new cotton, fleece or yarn, to bring comfort to patients. We support pediatric cancer research through the Katie Gerstenberger Endowment, whose funds support the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and The Ben Towne Foundation. We are #strongagainstcancer (with Russell Wilson, as you may have seen during half-time of the Seahawks’ game on Thanksgiving day)! Thank you for asking, Meg! Blessings to you!
jodi - our church partners with the Salvation Army or other local food bank every year to do a Thanksgiving turkey drive, and sometimes at other times throughout the year we help stock a food pantry as well.
Our kids go to Awana at a church just down the road from where we live, and my favorite is that they ask the kids several times a year to bring cans and/or peanut butter to help stock their food pantry. Because they’re directly asking and talking to the kids about it, it really helps get them involved and gives us things to talk about. I love it!
molly - my church is very involved in fighting hunger in our community and the surrounding area. we have sack sunday every month were we are urged to bring in a sack of food items to donate to our local food pantry. we also have an agape garden where an amazing amount of produce is grown to be given to the food bank. it is just amazing to see what they grow and give away. and finally one of the most touching programs is called backpack buddies. during the week bags of food items are packed and then on fridays are delivered into the backpacks of children who would likely go without meals over the weekend. it is an amazing program that gets food into the hands of children who really need it.
colleen - Annual pre-thanksgiving competition at my kids middle school- each class brought in a specific type of canned food or nonperishable item to make a whole celebratory meal when put together -then the teacher made it interesting by offering country cow (a local deli) egg sandwiches for breakfast for the whole class if their class brought in the highest number of food items, My daughter’s class won and she alone donated 14 cans of peas which we also shopped for together- can only imagine what the total number of cans from her homeroom was!
Kate @ Songs Kate Sang - Love this – just do something 🙂
Ginny - This is such a great blog post and real tangible ideas for people to do and ways for kids to get involved. I just love it!
Amanda - This is awesome!
jeannie - Our family did the same last year at Thanksgiving and made the decision to also volunteer once a month. Even someone as young as Annie is able to help at our local food bank, and your bunch would fill a whole shift. I enjoyed this post. I agree it is hard to fit in more commitments, but this once a month commitment is always positive and always a win-win. My kids enjoy working with the clients that come in and definitely enjoy helping in a personal way! May your Christmas be merry, but especially blessed!
JL - Our small Jr/Sr High School holds a “Can the Teacher” event on the last day of school before Thanksgiving break. The students bring canned goods and other items…the school weighs the items and for every so many pounds donated, a teacher’s door is “canned”, meaning they can’t teach that day. As you can imagine, the students get really involved and gather enough items that they’ve succeeded in “canning” all the teachers the last several years. Since it’s a day they probably wouldn’t do much anyway…it’s a win-win!!
Stephanie - We always give to the Post Office’s food drive when they ask. I agree with you that we could do more. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in my own big family that I forget to minister to others more than I do. One thing I LOVE that our small town does is a community garden. That is such a productive way to feed people. It’s the “teach a man to fish” concept.
Kelly - and that’s why I adore you… You make me want to be creative, but you also give us thoughts on a creative heart too. I just looked up a number to a lcoal church that has a food bank and going to contact them on what I can do to help out. Hugs to you~Kelly
Sarah - Our community has a project called Packing Friendship. This started when a teacher sent a grocery bag home with a student for food over the weekend. Otherwise, they would not have had food outside of school. Now, I think they send out a couple hundred bags of food on the weekends. Numerous local churches collect specific foods that can be used. Pretty awesome.
JulianneB - Thanks for sharing. The video is so good. My 10 year old daughter and I have had a lot of discussions about this lately. This week her school is collecting food to give to 116 children in her own school. They are collecting specifically so they can have food over Christmas break to eat. Before we moved to a different town, we used to help with Blessings in a Backpack. I always want her to be aware of the needs around her.
Gevay - It’s so easy to think of this as a problem that is far away, but it’s right here in our own communities. My boys and I volunteered at a local food bank before Thanksgiving, sorting their donations with our home-school group. My older son has chosen to give his “something you need” gift during our advent celebration to Feeding America. My younger son chose Blood Water.
Michelle - Doesn’t have to be big to make an impact….if you haven’t seen it, check out Matthew West’s song “Do Something”. They showed it at our church last weekend and it was pretty awesome!