MPFS 101

2009 brought significant changes in the hunger in Marion and Polk counties:

An average of 400 new families a month in Salem-Keizer are seeking the aid of a food box for the first time. Add rural areas, and the number is closer to 800. We’ve never seen anything like this before.

There are now an average of 6,561 families a month receiving emergency food boxes, that’s a 4% climb higher into all-time record territory. Last year at this time the number was 6,288. There’s more hunger this year.

For several years, the mix of people eating from food boxes has held at 44% children and 56% adults. Recently, the percentage of children has increased to 45%. Since an estimated 10,500 local children a month are eating from emergency food boxes, that means 105 more children teetering on the brink of hunger.

Based on our service numbers, we estimate that one out of every five area families ate from an emergency food box at least once in the past 12 months. That is up from one of every six households just two years ago.

To answer the increased need, MPFS has several new challenges:

We need more food. To reasonably address the increase, the additional needed food in the year ahead could be somewhere between 250,000 to 500,000 pounds.
Corporate food industry donations—our single largest source of food—dropped by more than 250,000 pounds last year, as businesses struggled to stay solvent in this challenging economy. With that loss and the rising need, we had to purchase 380,000 more pounds of food than the previous year, bumping our total spent on food to more than $400,000.
We are a charity, so it takes the generosity of donors to run our program and to buy food. Donations account for 80% of our operating budget. The irony is that, just when need is highest, donors are struggling in this economy, too, and many are unable to give or aren’t able to contribute as they would like. We are doing okay so far, but this will be a tough year.

There are still a handful of unserved areas in rural portions of Marion and Polk counties where there are hungry households. We need to add member charities to assist those areas. However, more charities would put more demand on the food supply and would add to the expense of our food-delivery costs. We budgeted $25,000 just to cover the costs of diesel for our trucks this year.

Already, we have changed in response to the need:

We collected a record 5,082,674 pounds of food (342,000 pounds more than last year) and trucked it to our network of over 80 member charities located throughout Marion and Polk counties. The value of that food was over $6.5 million.

A record 77,462 emergency food boxes were given to area families through our member charities this past year. That is 7,570 more than the previous year.

Fought poverty and hunger by supporting literacy programs, providing more than 6,000 books to kids during spring break and another 7,700 were given to children along with food boxes at member charities.

We received more than 254,000 cans of corn and beans through a unique partnership with Farmers Ending Hunger; several local farmers, who planted extra crops to donate; and Norpac and Truitt Bros., who canned the bounty at a greatly reduced price.

With partners like OSU Extension, began teaching gardening, nutrition, cooking and food preservation classes for dozens of area low-income families, hoping to promote increased self-sufficiency and, thereby, decreased demand for emergency assistance.

Salvaged over 340,000 pounds of sell-by dated deli, dairy and meat items that would historically have been dumped in landfills. Quickly transported these perfectly good foods to reach hungry families, often the same day.

With partners, MPFS led efforts at 30 community gardens throughout the two counties. Gardens and home garden donations resulted in over 100,000 pounds of fresh produce to augment the emergency food supply.

Piloted a youth garden enrichment program that engaged 112 youth in a season-long experience in gardening, nutrition education and service learning, with more than 5000 pounds of produce grown by students going to feed hungry area residents.

Provided 57 low-income families with garden space and expertise so they could learn to grow their own food. In all, 225 garden plots were made available to the community.

Food Share