Northwest Arkansas Families More In Need Of Food As Economy Continues To Sour
Last updated Thursday, October 2, 2008 8:19 PM CDT in News
By Rose Ann Pearce
THE MORNING NEWS
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SPRINGDALE -- As hard as it may be to believe, some kids in Northwest Arkansas go to bed hungry at night.
"There is a tremendous need to feed people, which is hard to believe," said Marge Wolf, the executive director of Northwest Arkansas Food Bank.
As the nation's economic woes, from mortgage crisis to credit crisis to Wall Street meltdown, settles deeper across Northwest Arkansas, food pantries see new clients every day who need help to put food on the table.
Some food pantry directors said calls and visits have doubled in recent months. Many of the calls are from families with two working parents who can't make ends meet because of rising prices for gasoline, utilities and food.
"The food budget is the easiest to cut," said Bill Crawford, director of Helping Hands in Bentonville. "You can take money from the food budget to cover the other costs."
Among the hunger relief agencies in Northwest Arkansas, the situation is expected to worsen before it improves.
"If the economy continues to spiral down, people will be asking who never asked for help before," said Debbie Rambo, the director of Samaritan Center in Rogers.
Families could get by when gasoline was $2.50 a gallon and $100 bought four or five bags of groceries, Rambo said. Nowadays, gasoline is more than $3 a gallon and $100 doesn't buy as much at the grocery store.
"These are people who did nothing except for trying to pay bills," said Susan O'Brien Brockway, who directs a national pilot hunger relief program for Tyson Foods.
Monetary contributions are down and so too are in-kind donations from businesses, Rambo said.
When the cupboards at pantries like Helping Hands and Samaritan Center become barren, the agencies turn to the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank for replenishment.
The food bank is also facing difficulty because of the sour economic climate and hurricanes Ike and Gustav, officials said.
The food bank has spent nearly three times the amount of money this year over the past to buy food to supplement contributions. It's on track to distribute nearly double the amount of food over the past year, more than 2 million pounds.
"Donations are flat to down compared to last year," said Gerald Demory, the food bank's director of agency and donor relations.
The food bank is an umbrella for some 150 hunger relief agencies in Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties. The agencies can purchase food at the food bank for 18 cents a pound.
Those agencies are challenged by a growing number of people seeking assistance.
"The demand is close to double what we were last year," Crawford said, adding the agency sees between 65 and 80 families a day.
Food, utilities, rent, gasoline cost more and wages aren't keeping up.
At Seven Hills Homeless Center in Fayetteville, the cupboard is close to bare, said Jon Woodward, the center's executive director.
"We've had a 100 percent increase in calls from the near-homeless in the last month," Woodward said. "We're more than 5,000 cans shorter than where we usually are. We're telling people we have a limited amount of food. As long as we have it, we'll give it out."
Several agencies, like Seven Hills and Helping Hands, have issued urgent pleas in recent weeks for help in restocking cupboards. Harps Food Stores just concluded a canned food drive for the food bank.
A motorcycle club dropped off 2,700 pounds of food at the food bank this week. Tyson Foods sent over a truckload of frozen chicken.
And students in six Northwest Arkansas high schools are joining the hunger fight with a food drive. The drive starts next week, lasts six weeks, and is one of 11 projects from Arizona to North Carolina in the Tyson-sponsored pilot program.
"I'm excited about the energy of the kids who either understand more about hunger or are more philanthropic," said Tyson's Brockway. The students are not as uncomfortable as adults seem to be to talk about hunger.
Their attitude is more in line with "'We'll just do it,'" Brockway said. "Kids have no problem talking about it. To them, it just means (people) need some help."
Participating schools are Fayetteville, Springdale, Har-Ber, Rogers, Gentry and St. Paul high schools. Others may sign up to participate at the kickoff party next week.
"You never get used to seeing people hurt," Rambo said. "First-timers are especially moving because they don't know where to start. I think it will get worse before it gets better."
At a Glance
Hunger Everywhere
Some 25 million low-income people facing hunger in the U.S. receive food assistance from a network of community-based programs, including pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after-school programs, backpack programs and others. More than 9 million are children and nearly 3 million are elderly.
• An estimated 35.5 million Americans are food insecure, meaning their access to enough food is limited by a lack of money and other resources.
• 41.5 percent of households served by the Feeding America Network reported having to choose between buying food and paying for utilities or heat within the previous 12 months.
• Of the 25 million Americans in need of emergency food assistance, 40 percent are non-Hispanic white; 38 percent are black; 17 percent are Hispanic; 6 percent are Native American or Pacific Islander.
• An estimated 12.6 million children lived in food-insecure households in 2006.
• Arkansas has a population of 2.7 million people, of which 14.7 percent, or about 397,000 people, are living with hunger.
• The average number of food-insecure children younger than 18 in Arkansas between 2003 and 2005 was 126,107 or 18.5 percent.
• Northwest Arkansas has 28.8 percent of the state's population, yet poverty has risen by 130 percent in Rogers and 104 percent in Springdale, according to the 2000 census.
Source: Feeding America, Northwest Arkansas Food Bank
How To Help
Most Needed Food Items
• Macaroni and cheese
• Peanut butter
• Canned fruits, vegetables
• Canned tuna
• Hamburger and tuna box dinners
• Ramen noodles
• Dry pinto beans
• Bagged rice
• Cereal
• Powered milk
• Canned soup
• Canned meats
• Toilet paper
• Toothpaste
Source: Northwest Arkansas Food Bank
Reader Comments (30 comment(s))
The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsibility of their authors. The Morning News does not review comments before their publication, nor do we guarantee their accuracy. By publishing a comment here you agree to abide by our comment policy. If you see a comment that violates our policy, please notify the web editor.
tootsie wrote on Oct 3, 2008 7:31 AM:
Bama Hog wrote on Oct 3, 2008 8:37 AM:
lifer66 wrote on Oct 3, 2008 8:46 AM:
threestudents wrote on Oct 3, 2008 8:48 AM:
racialprofile wrote on Oct 3, 2008 9:24 AM:
have a good day "
mafm wrote on Oct 5, 2008 12:58 PM:
violet1 wrote on Oct 7, 2008 1:54 PM:
ozarks wrote on Oct 8, 2008 12:32 PM:
adabell wrote on Oct 8, 2008 6:44 PM:
sqirt wrote on Oct 8, 2008 7:46 PM:
sqirt wrote on Oct 8, 2008 7:57 PM:
oh i forgot, i am a native american, maybe that's my problem? the thing is as americans we need to stand against this government and demand that our consitution be upheld as it was writen. "
lowell86 wrote on Oct 9, 2008 4:56 AM:
violet1 wrote on Oct 9, 2008 2:51 PM:
violet1 wrote on Oct 9, 2008 5:03 PM:
illegalsout wrote on Oct 10, 2008 3:32 AM:
Even God makes mistakes but then again maybe he put them here so I could have a reason to scratch my head,and wonder,Curtains in a chevy what the **##? "
sovereignty wrote on Oct 10, 2008 10:47 PM:
DaisyGirl wrote on Oct 10, 2008 11:00 PM:
DaisyGirl wrote on Oct 10, 2008 11:04 PM:
adabell wrote on Oct 10, 2008 11:29 PM:
I think our government and the Mexican government is responsible. The Mexican government encourages illegal immigration and even provides information to assist them. "
adabell wrote on Oct 10, 2008 11:44 PM:
In LA 40% of workers are paid under the table and do not pay taxes. Yet their children are being educated at the cost of 10,000 per child per year. Two thirds of the babies are born to Mexican nationals, and are paid for by medi cal. 75% of the most wanted criminals are illegal aliens, and 95% of the warrants for murder are for illegals. 53% are functionally illiterate. 35% of all inmates are Mexican nationals here illegally. 300,000 illegal aliens are living in garages.
All of that is just Los Angeles. The FBI says most of the gang members are from south of the border. 60% of the hud property meant for our low income families are inhabited by illegals in the city that is the homeless capital of the US. Radio stations in LA, 21 are Spanish speaking. Welfare is collected by 29 to 41%. "
illegalsout wrote on Oct 11, 2008 6:37 AM:
Whites and asians and indians are doing good in relation to their numbers in the general population but once again surprise, the Obamas and castros of this country are leaching off the taxpayer.Oh how I wish General Forrest was here now,he would drive away the leaches. "
BigTex wrote on Oct 12, 2008 7:51 AM:
Jones wrote on Oct 12, 2008 11:39 AM:
sovereignty wrote on Oct 12, 2008 2:42 PM:
illegalsout wrote on Oct 12, 2008 6:49 PM:
1.I have never received $1 dollar from the government in welfare.
2.I have good credit and just bought a house this week in fact for $242,000.
3.I make about $96,000 a year.
4.I am a legal u.s. citizen,who grew up in mcdonald county mo.
5.I grew up poor and never went to college.
6. I'm 33 and have 3 kids.
7.I work 6 days a week and have years.
8.I've never done drugs or been in trouble with the law.
Have a nice day Jones,now you've seen my cards let's see yours. "
adabell wrote on Oct 12, 2008 8:52 PM:
adabell wrote on Oct 12, 2008 9:10 PM:
Statisticly, illegals use social sevices disproportionatly, which is understandable, they are in the lower income brackets and have more children than average.
The NewYork Times has an article reporting "U.S. hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance."
20 million or so people in the country using our schools and our healthcare system without kicking in to help pay for them is an incredible burden that the rest of us must bear.
Real Americans oppose their country being invaded and yes, cry when they see it happen. "
Sickofit wrote on Oct 23, 2008 4:18 PM:
Not already registered?
Fayetteville wrote on Oct 3, 2008 12:22 AM:
They can afford to give away their chicken, since they have managed to drive down wages and import Mexicans to compete with working Americans.
Tyson is part of the problem. This "help" is insulting. "