"Land of Plenty has Plenty of Hunger" was the headline of a Virginian-Pilot editorial last fall. It said, essentially, that in this great land of ours, too many children and too many adults go hungry. The people at the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia know this to be true, right in our own community. Each month, the Foodbank provides 800,000 pounds of food to approximately 85,000 needy people. This food is recovered from restaurants, supermarkets, food distributors, the USDA, farmers, wholesalers and sportsmen, and through food and fund drives. The annual wholesale value of this food is $14.4 million and equates to 7.6 million meals!
One of the oldest foodbanks in the United States (established in 1981), the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia serves a target area of 3,300 square miles. Last year, requests for emergency food rose by 22 percent. In South Hampton Roads, unemployment, low-paying jobs and the high costs of housing, prescription medicines and utilities contributed to this increase.
The day-to-day existence and struggles of the Foodbank's clients are often heartbreaking and almost always hidden. The Foodbank serves low-income, working families; impoverished senior citizens; and tens of thousands of poor children who too often miss meals.
In the months after Hurricane Isabel struck the area, the Foodbank distributed nearly double the amount of emergency food normally provided to partner agencies who serve the poor and hungry every day. This was more food than the Foodbank had ever distributed in a concentrated period in its entire 23-year history.
The Foodbank's partner agencies number over 350 - senior citizen centers, church pantry programs, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after-school programs, day-care centers and rehabilitation facilities. These agencies and the Foodbank are literally the safety net for residents in Southeastern Virginia. As partners, the Foodbank and these direct service providers are able to conduct their respective missions and at the same time, provide fresh and nutritious food to feed thousands of needy, low-income clients, sometimes saving, and always seeking, to improve lives.
