(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Volunteers hand out food from the Utah Food Bank to needy families, Dec. 23, 2020. One year ago, the Food Band was serving 75 families, but now they serve 325 families, said manager Kenneth Greenland. Cars begin lining up at 1pm for the 4:30pm start.
Families are camping out overnight before distribution days at the Utah Food Bank for fear the pantry will run out of food before they can get some.
Before the pandemic, Ginette Bott, president and CEO of the nonprofit, had never seen anything like that.
“It breaks my heart,” she said. “... The pandemic just came over us like a wave. Overall, every single entity we give food to, the increased need has been tremendous. And we’re still not helping everyone who needs it.”
Schools have stepped up to distribute the bulk of the food during the crisis, including hosting mobile pantries from the food bank, opening their own pantries and preparing meals.
Eliminating food insecurity has been the nonprofit’s mission since the 1970s, but getting policymakers to pay attention to the underlying issues of unaffordable housing, costly medical care and low wages that contribute to hunger has been difficult.
“Suddenly during the pandemic, it feels like it’s turned on a pin,” Cornia said, “and everybody wants to know why people are hungry.”
‘It isn’t enough’
Food insecurity has always been relatively high in Utah — roughly 11% of the population here, and 12% of all kids. And Bott believes it’s gotten even higher this year.
The group expects the percentage of Utahns needing food to jump above 15% because of the pandemic. That would mean more than 400,000 people here are regularly going without, with about one in seven children.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The Utah Food Bank has tripled the amount of food it’s providing to the community, going from about 2 million pounds a month before the pandemic to 6 million now. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doubled what it contributed last year, delivering 4 million pounds of food to the Utah Food Bank, plus more to nonprofits, including refugee resettlement agencies and some school districts.
The Utah-based faith also funds education foundations to help buy basic school supplies, bus passes, lice kits and backpacks filled with food for the weekends. “Our desire is to be part of a community effort to meet these critical needs,” said Rick Foster, welfare and self-reliance manager for Utah.
Other nonprofits are also helping feed children and their families: USANA Kids Eat, For the Kids, Catholic Community Services and more. Without all of the groups working together, Bott said, the need would be far worse.
“We serve the 84116 ZIP code. All of their jobs were hit hardest and first [in the pandemic].” Zoloth said. “They were in restaurants, hospitality. It’s in industries [where many] are not coming back.”
The foundation distributes 350 bags of food each week, down from 600 during the spring shutdown. “If we stayed at 600, it wouldn’t be enough,” she said. “The need is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Everything everybody’s doing, it isn’t enough.”
Many of the corporate donors that used to provide money for the program have had to drop out because of the strain on businesses with the pandemic, she said. Families have stepped up in their place.
Still, as the program distributes to 30 schools, there are 13 more on its waiting list.
‘Change that needs to happen’
As part of a broader solution, Cornia wants to expand access to established food programs, such as food stamps (known as SNAP) and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides food to pregnant women, new mothers, infants and children up to age 5.
Those will help people, long term, to be able to buy groceries, instead of relying on pickups, she said.
Additionally, Cornia said, 85% of the families using food stamps have one working adult, which also points to the need to increase the minimum wage and pay workers more.
The response by food pantries, schools and other groups has been huge, she said, but “it doesn’t feel like it’s alleviating any of it. How do you sustain that kind of increase in demand without also looking at the structural change that needs to happen in wages and housing and things like that?”
The fact that so many children and families rely on schools to eat at nights and on weekends points to a broken system, Cornia added.
“My bigger concern is, should that be the role of schools? Should families have to depend on schools to provide food to them?” she asked. “What is the community doing to mitigate the need? What state policies are there to mitigate that?”
Chris Williams, spokesman for the Davis School District, raises similar concerns. “Schools have picked up the slack where there have been gaps in community food pantry assistance, particularly in the north part of Davis County,” he said, “but the need there is larger than the supply of food assistance.”
“There does need to be structural changes,” she said, “to ensure kids can go home and families can put food on their table and a roof over their children’s heads.”
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
"feed" - Google News
January 01, 2021 at 08:30PM
https://ift.tt/3n72Txo
As Utah schools step up to feed kids, advocates warn it's not only their role to solve hunger - Salt Lake Tribune
"feed" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2z3xEQN
https://ift.tt/2yko4c8
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "As Utah schools step up to feed kids, advocates warn it's not only their role to solve hunger - Salt Lake Tribune"
Post a Comment