september is hunger action month

volunteer project: food lifeline in seattle, washington

I admit it. Had I known this Saturday afternoon was gonna be so darn summery, I probably would not have signed up to volunteer with BEAN Seattle’s project today working with Food Lifeline. I was okay with missing out on the annual Ballard SeafoodFest, but the first official weekend of summer weather in Seattle? No way - especially when I’m slated to go to Peru next week to volunteer for three weeks in the throes of its coldest winter in history. Right now, this gal needs all the Vitamin D she can get (within reason of malaria meds side effects).

BEAN is a Seattle-based organization that connects young professionals with volunteering, networking and social opportunities around the Puget Sound area. (BEAN also operates in many cities around the globe with over 100,000 members). I’m a few years older than its average member, but that didn’t stop me from fitting in just fine with its volunteer event today at Food Lifeline.

After my recent experience working with food distribution among the needy in Honduras, my inner journo was curious to see how the whole process worked. Sure, I’ve been steering my Seattle altruism efforts in food-centric directions, but this was also a personal R&D mission to gain greater understanding of how food banks work. You can’t blame a gal for wanting to learn.

Twelve volunteers from BEAN Seattle, along with 27 students and parents from The Evergreen School showed up at Food Lifeline in Shoreline today at 1 p.m. to work a three hour shift. After a quick spin through the (ridiculously organized and immaculate) facilities, and learning the rules of the volunteering road, the BEAN group was set loose to sort and repackage food donations from the recent Seattle letter carrier’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

When it was all said and done, BEAN volunteers boxed more than 5,550 pounds of foodstuffs, which will serve 4,269 people in West Washington meals. The Evergreen School kiddos scooped and bagged 1,488 pounds of Fiber One cereal, which will serve 2,289 breakfasts (I did not spy equal amounts of toilet paper donations). The numbers are impressive, but what is really mind-blowing is that Food Lifeline distributes 25 millions pounds of food to West Washington residents annually. More than 4 million of those pounds are perishable goods, as grocery stores these days steer towards selling scratch and dent canned food to stores like Grocery Outlet. Local markets like Whole Foods, Safeway and Fred Meyer all step up to the charitable plate with huge donations. To give you an idea how much food Food Lifeline serves up to more than 300 organizations around the Western part of our state each year, it’s enough to fill Qwest Field ten times. Now sit down for these stats. Last year, 9,320 Food Lifeline volunteers repacked 3,218,732 pounds of food, which – drum roll, please – served 2,475,948 meals to West Washington residents. Our volunteer coordinator, Ben, assured us that the majority of Food Lifeline’s recipients aren’t homeless or living on their cars, but people like, well…your neighbor. He also emphasized that this constant flow of food is made possible by the 700 to 1200 people who volunteer weekly with Food Lifeline. Wow.
Time flew as we pulled compostable light blue bags filled with donations from oversized cardboard boxes and carefully inspected for bulges, dents, rust and expiration dates. As instructed, we kept an eagle eye on raw, thawed or partially eaten foods (yes, we encountered all of the above), as well as recently recalled peanut butter items and certain Kellogg’s cereals. Time flew by and when we were cut off from sorting and repacking our final cardboard box of food at 3 p.m., my posse of über-efficient food packers were sad to stop so short of the finish line. As we exchanged quick goodbyes, I realized that I so enjoyed spending the afternoon with such a great like-minded groups, and if I had to choose between Vitamin D and volunteering with this crew again, the latter would surely win out.

Between now and July 23, 2010 Food Lifeline is hosting an event called Food Frenzy, which aims to end hunger for children in Western Washington. Join over 100 local law firms, accounting firms, design & construction firms, credit unions, and public sector legal organizations in this creative competition to raise funds and food for Food Lifeline. For more information on Food Frenzy or to find out how to volunteer, click here.

the UN reports that 1 out of every 3 hondurans suffer from hunger

For me, cooking stemmed as a survival instinct; borne from a place of necessity. My mother passed away when I was 17 years old and my father’s culinary skills were limited to the Weber grill (in the middle of an East Coast winter, mind you). The first time I played the deceased mother, no-questions-asked truancy card, I took the R5 Septa Regional Rail into downtown Philadelphia and discovered row after row of farmers’ stalls filled with fruits, vegetables, meats, artisanal pastas and cheeses at Reading Terminal Market. The colors, smells and cooking possibilities overwhelmed my senses and my appreciation for food, one of the universe’s most basic needs, has only grown to a sacred place of respect and praise over the decades. It’s a privilege I take great pleasure in three times daily and never take for granted.

Hunger, homelessness and poverty were rampant during my recent volunteer project for The Global Citizen Project with Building a Future and Hogares Crea in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I had seen painful glimpses of these issues on previous trips to Latin America, but never experienced its innumerable effects so intimately. When I traveled throughout Honduras in late 2007, I was floored by the beauty of the country. On this trip though, beauty was limited to a few quick countryside road trips and the gracious hospitality of the Honduran people. If beauty existed in Tegucigalpa, it was trumped by never-ending piles of trash and an omnipresent concern for gang violence, which kept my personal safety radar working overtime. The city (and country) face a plethora of problems ranging from its 40% unemployment rate, $1.30-1.50 average hourly wages and pervasive lack of education (the average Honduran completes 6.5 years of school) to widely divided social classes and a 19.5 year old age median. Factor in Honduras’ recent Presidential coup and its resulting political polarization, and it doesn’t take a Poli Sci major to realize that the country doesn’t exactly have an easy recipe for success.

All of this doom and gloom certainly was disheartening, but one aspect that stuck with me was how the impoverished children I worked with ate. For many of the capitol city’s dwellers, Walmart-like superstores, fast food and Coca Cola culture reigned supreme (the seemingly holy trinity of American exports). It was a drastically different story for the youth I interacted with on a daily basis. Leftover, expired and damaged foodstuffs donated en masse by local grocery store, La Colonia, were delivered approximately every 10 days to Asociacion Puente al Desarrollio, a command central of sorts for several local humanitarian efforts. Cardboard boxes, loose bottles and jars arrived piled high in the back of barely functioning pick-up trucks – exposed to Honduras’ hot, tropical sun for who knows how long – dripping, smelly and disgusting. Although each delivery technically contained thousands of pounds of food, it was product that most Americans would deem inedible, myself included, although my cultural anthropology schooled significant other tried to convince me that human stomachs can, over time, adapt to digesting spoiled food. Thank goodness I was only a short-term guinea pig. Within minutes of unloading cases Cinnamon Chex, Dannon yogurt, Hy-Top Barbecue sauce, 100 pound bags of red beans and rice, and cases of water marked “Haiti Relief,” goods were carefully distributed to a growing group of street side spectators, who clutched items with we-just-won-the-lottery fervor. When I returned to Asociacion Puente al Desarrollio, more than half of the foodstuffs had already found homes.

During my three week stint in Honduras, I found myself consuming the food truck stuffs on several occasions. I survived several week expired, sun-exposed yogurt and Spaghetti-O slathered boiled chicken parts. I sliced off fuzz-free parts tomatoes and scooped out the bright orange flesh of rotting papayas. I refrained from whipping out my SteriPen when tooth-achingly sweet juice mixes were served with surely contaminated water, if only to not offend the gracious hospitality of my hosts. I pumped my body full of probiotics and prayed that my malaria meds (Doxycycline) would keep my gastrointestinal system safe. I quickly learned how to say “Yo no tengo mucho hambre,” but never wanted to come across as ungrateful for a second to these people who generously shared when they had so very little themselves. I even rationalized that I’d already lived through E.coli twice plus two parasitic diseases from contaminated water sources in California (go figure) and the humiliation of submitting weekly fecal samples to the Monterey County Health Department, so surely, the worldwide water gods would want to play nice with me. I worried endlessly about whether these boys and girls were getting enough nutrition.

Despite constant exposure to these hard realities, I had a difficult time fully understanding a world that lives a moment-to-moment, hand-to-mouth existence. My head spun with pie in the sky dreams of a future filled with opportunity for these children, where hopefully, someday, the Vatican would realize that education and (gasp!) contraception is far more valuable than creating hungry mouths. A “can do” kinda gal who’s rooted in a reality where God doesn’t write child support checks can dream, right?

As a food and travel writer and avid home chef, food plays an important role in my world, whether it’s shopping my local farmers’ markets in Seattle or volunteering at Marra Farm Giving Garden or Food Lifeline. Having easy access to a variety of fresh, healthy food is something I’ve always taken great pleasure in, but after being on the receiving end of how people living in poverty eat, I promise to eat every last bite on my plate and thank my lucky stars for the privilege.

a toast to sarah doyle for putting me over $1K

Wow, wow, wow! I am beyond thrilled to have passed the $1K mark for The Global Citizen Project -- $1020 to be exact. I still have a long way to go to reach the $20K mark by February 22, 2010, but I'm completely committed and inspired to make it happen.

My world intersected with the latest backer, Sarah Doyle earlier this year on press trip to the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. We were there for the Maui Film Festival and our hotel was crawling with celebrities -- Eddie Murphy, Kristen Bell, Anna Faris, James Marsden, and Tori Spelling to name a few. The weekend was filled with non-stop film screenings, parties, and food-centric activities. Hello, Taste of Chocolate. Imagine the typical five star amenity-laden FS experience on steroids, plus a whole lotta star-spotting and incredible film and you've summed up what Maui Film Festival weekend is all about.

It just so happened this particular weekend was also Sarah's birthday. Since I am all about birthdays (ask my SO about the brightly colored signage and balloons I'd put all along Carmel Valley Rd. when we lived in California), we decided to celebrate and attend the screening of Cash Crop, since it had been getting a lot of media attention and buzz. Willie Nelson (appropriately enough) performed before the show, we brought a bottle of La Fée Absinthe, and well, let's just say, I had more fun than any new friend should be allowed ringing in a new year with Sarah.

Since then, we've commiserated our mutual loathing of United Airlines (her lost luggage story is the travel debaucle/how not to handle customer service story of 2009, IMO), crossed paths on a Google food group and have shared a lovely cyber comaraderie that I've often missed working as a freelancer. So, thank you Sarah for coming into my world this year, and thank you for putting my project over the $1K mark.

If you want to learn more about the world of food, wine, whiskey and travel, you can check out Sarah's blog, The Epicurean Scribe here.

do-gooders

People doing good makes my heart go pitter-patter. (Shhh...listen closely. Do you hear it?) Anyway, there are all sorts of warm and fuzzy things crossing my inbox this ho-ho-holiday season, but here are the top three du jour that I feel are especially worthy. Take a sec and check ‘em out.

Passports with Purpose
Take four whip-smart travel bloggers, put ‘em behind a deserving cause in need of funding, and voilà! – you’ve got yourself helluva giant worldwide web raffle.
What is it: This year, the Passports with Purpose’s fundraising effort is supporting American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC), an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving opportunites for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia.
How it works: Dozens of travel bloggers are hosting giveaways in support of this fundraising effort. For each $10 donation that you make to AAfC, you will be entered in the giveaway(s) of your choice. The drawing closes December 21, 2009 and winners are announced January 5, 2010.

Wandermelon
The travel-savvy folks at Wandermelon are hosting a timely holiday gifty giveaway while showing some love for the Four Seasons Resorts’ partnership with Sleeping Children Around the World.
How it works: For every Four Seasons gift card sold between now and December 10, 2009, Four Seasons Resort will donate the cost of one bed kit to the charity. (This year, Sleeping Children Around the World delivered their one millionth bed kit.)
What you can win: Current and new Wandermelon subscribers can enter to win a $100 Four Seasons gift card between now and December 5, 2009. (As in this upcoming Saturday.) Log in here to subscribe.

Let’s Do Lunch! Photo Contest
This promotion is easy. And fun. Especially for the foodies, who like me, I’m sure document every little tasty morsel put in front of them.
How to enter: Document your meal with a quick pic and a few sentences dishing on the experience. Shoot over a pic of your lunch to Let's Do Lunch! from your iPhone or mobile device in one of four categories and 20% of the entry fees ($12 for one pic; $20 for up to four) will go to a local food bank determined by the grand prizewinner. Contest ends January 20, 2010.
What you can win: a Nikon D5000 Digital SLR Camera Kit with 18-55mm VR lens, an HP Pavillion dm3 series notebook, a ThinkTank Airport International camera bag and a bevy of other photogaphy-related paraphernalia.