Telling the story of hunger and poverty is not an easy thing, particularly when you live in a culture where hunger is silent, something to be hidden, or if possible, denied. If you’ve experienced being hungry or have a loved one who has been hungry, sometimes the experience is just too raw to talk about. There are no words to describe what it’s like to feel so hopeless, so powerless, or so invisible. Sometimes there are no words.
Yet the story must be told. It must be shouted from the rooftops, because here in the rich farmlands of the mid-Willamette Valley, we are experiencing a tidal wave of hunger, a crisis of needless suffering in the land of plenty. One in six Oregonians are receiving food stamps. Over half the children in our Salem-Keizer school district are receiving free or reduced price lunches at school. Of those in this program, some 80% are receiving free lunch, which means their families subsist well below the federal poverty line. Our member pantries are handing out emergency food boxes at an ever-increasing rate and nearly half of the people eating from those food boxes are children.
Doesn’t it make you crazy to hear statistics like that? Don’t you feel compelled to do something, anything, to make the whole cycle stop?
If so, Marion-Polk Food Share has a job for you: join our MPFS Speakers Bureau. We are looking for people of all ages and backgrounds who are just as committed as we are to spreading the word that hunger is not an acceptable condition in our communities anymore and that we refuse to allow it to remain hidden, ignored, or de-prioritized any longer. We are convinced that if we wait around for government to find a solution to hunger, we will continue to wait…and wait…and wait. Our children—our future--can’t wait. We have the resources and the wisdom to figure this out for ourselves. We just need to wake our friends and neighbors up to the fact that we CAN feed those in need if we join together and make the right choices. We CAN build a healthier community in which hunger is no longer an issue if we unite to do what needs to be done.
As a Speakers Bureau member, you will receive training from our staff, have access to current statistics and program information, and have the opportunity to attend quarterly workshops on public speaking and storytelling. We will work together to hone the message, speak truth to power, and engage our churches, businesses, civic organizations, educational institutions, and the media in the work to be done. Everyone will bring something different to this experience and together we will find infinite ways to tell the story until everyone knows it by heart.
Contact Kat Daniel at kdaniel@marionpolkfoodshare.org or call 503-581-3855 x322.