Stefan Johnson

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  Stefan commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  5 Actions in 5 Minutes to End Hunger

  I've got another one - get creative!!
  
  For example, we have a project running called the Soup Lady Project which is an example of alternative food assistance. We took one person who loves to cook (and has time) and paired them up with a funding network. This allows us to make 4.5 gallons of tasty nutritious soup for a homeless shelter in San Francisco. Every Wednesday I pick up a bucket of soup from the cook and deliver it to the shelter, where they have the empty bucket from the previous week waiting to swap out. In doing this we make healthy real food accessible to people who don't have the money, space or opportunity to cook for themselves.
  
  The economics are astounding and match up to what you find in the Food Stamp Challenge you mentioned. You can make healthy tasty food for under $1/serving. That means for each meal we make we need about $30/month to fund it. The network we've managed to create so far consists of "Soup Lady Sponsors" who are set up to automatically donate $5/month through Pay Pal. It turns into a hardly noticeable expense which leads directly to bringing food to about 7 people who really need it.
  
  If you've studied what it's like to be homeless or known someone who had to live on the streets for any period of time you know how it can be a full time job just to secure a bed for the night, much less healthy food three times a day. Most people end up leveraging convenience foods which are cheap but terribly unhealthy. Finding ways to support these people is simply a humane lifestyle choice. Many people who choose to participate make the choice to have one less alcoholic drink each month or to cut back on some other frivolous expense.
  
  When you add up the hypothetical impact of everyone who lives in San Francisco, for example, carving out $5/month to support food assistance... the result is the effective end of hunger in the city. The result is a network of support which makes tasty nutritious food available to every citizen as a human right.
  
  Thanks for your hard work in drawing attention to the problem of hunger here in America. It's something most people don't think of when they consider the impact of hunger but the truth is that it undermines our society's efforts more than we understand. The Harvard School of Public Health's study on the economic cost burden of hunger in America estimated the yearly cost burden of hunger at over $90B. That's Billions with a capital B. That's a huge negative cost to our systems of healthcare, education and business which we could avoid by simply funding food assistance programs. If the government won't choose to do it with the tons of tax money we pay them, it's our responsibility to do it ourselves.
  
  If you'd like to read more about my project or hunger in America in general please feel free to visit my site at:
  www.feedpeopleproject.org
  
  Again... thanks... and have a great week!
  
  - S