Coming on the heels of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent report on food insecurity in the U.S., the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) this week released its annual survey (PDF) of the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens. Its findings provide another vivid snapshot of the economic distress gripping the country, but also offer an encouraging sign of the federal government’s efforts to alleviate suffering:
In 2009, New York City’s emergency food providers (food pantries, soup kitchens, and brown bag programs) reported a 20.8 percent increase in need for their services, with the fastest growth in demand from families with children. While this comes as no surprise, given that the demand at such agencies has been rising for years and has only been accelerated by the recession, this year’s findings also show something new: a renewed potential to alleviate hunger through government action.
As need increased dramatically, for the first time in years, this survey showed a positive trend: although the economy continued to plummet in 2009 and increasing numbers of New Yorkers relied on soup kitchens and food pantries for help, such agencies had somewhat more ability to meet the growing demand than previous years, as Chart 2 shows. This is mostly due to increasing participation in the SNAP/Food Stamp Program and a surge in anti-hunger funding from the federal recovery bill.
The study credited the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the so-called stimulus bill — for providing much-needed support for aid efforts, and urged the government to renew stimulus funds to ensure that the neediest continue to receive the help they need in a challenging economic time. Moreover, as NYCCAH Executive Director and Progressive Fix contributor Joel Berg wrote here last week, “It’s a well-known fact that food stamps offer one of the best bangs for buck when it comes to stimulus,” another consideration in aid expansion’s favor.
The NYCCAH release also included this entreaty:
We, as Americans, also need to change our attitude towards volunteerism — instead of donating cans around the holidays, we need to be offering our skilled services to pantries and soup kitchens year round. While it may be gratifying to serve soup for a morning, it will do more good to help a pantry apply for a grant or develop a website.
As reported in this Sunday’s New York Times, food aid programs are besieged by would-be volunteers looking to ladle soup or load cans around Thanksgiving. In fact, most places have nowhere to put most of them. As Berg told the Times about food aid volunteering, “Please, please, please don’t do it just on Thanksgiving, and please, please, please understand, we have skills-based needs that are far more important than just food service.”
The need for skills-based volunteers at soup kitchens and pantries is a familiar plea from those on the front lines of the hunger wars. But, as Berg notes, it also underscores the importance of national service programs like AmeriCorps and the AmeriCorps VISTA. A vigorous volunteer corps, given proper training, can — and do — fill the skills-based gaps for these vital social service programs.
On this front, the Obama administration has given civil society actors another reason to cheer, with his expansion of AmeriCorps earlier this year. With that, the stimulus bill, and its vocal support for volunteerism, the administration has shown a keen understanding of the complementary roles national service, civic enterprise, and government action play in bolstering the public welfare. It’s reason to be thankful in a dreary time.
