Food Pantries: The Need is Still Great

In this morning's Daily Herald, I read an article about the Mount Prospect Food Pantry. Evidently, they are desperately in need of donations because the economy has significantly increased the demand for its services.

That got me to thinking . . . it's been awhile since I talked about how badly food pantries need our help all year long (and not just at Christmas or Thanksgiving).

With summer here, the demand on food pantries is greater because families that rely on the free and reduced-fee school lunches to help stretch their food stamp dollars don't have that safety net.

According to the Illinois Department of Human Services, a family of 4 can have a monthly gross income of no more than $2,389 ($28,668 gross annually) in order to qualify for food stamps. That's not a lot of money, especially in the Chicago area. So people who make too much to qualify for food stamps, but are poor, the working poor, also rely on food pantries to help them make ends meet.

If you're a long-time reader of Little Merry Sunshine, you have probably read about my own personal experience with getting food from the food pantry and you know supporting food pantries is personal to me.

In addition to non-expired food (this is key because they cannot give out expired food to clients), many food pantries also accept toiletries. The Wheeling Township Food Pantry has a list of the items they need. The Mount Prospect Food Pantry specifically needs cash donations and bottled juice, canned goods, dried goods, rice, baby diapers and paper goods, but they can't accept cans larger than 32 ounces.

I buy a few extra items each week to donate to the food pantry. Thanks to buy one, get one free sales and coupons, this often has zero impact on my budget. I collect the items and when I have a full bag, I run over to the food pantry.

As you begin to harvest your garden, you might also think about donating some of your excess fruits and veggies to your local food pantries. See the list of food pantries accepting produce here.

Think your tiny garden can't make a difference? Watch the video below to learn how 11-year-old Katie Stagliano is making a difference in her community. She was on CNN today and has started Katie's Krops.



If you're not in Arlington Heights or Mt. Prospect, you can find food pantries local to you at Feeding America's website.

Kids Do the Darndest Things

As I've talked about before, there was a time when I was growing up that we lived on food stamps and got help from the local food pantry. I was in 8th grade and I was a student at Thomas Junior High in Arlington Heights, now Thomas Middle School. At the time, I don't remember ever doing things like food drives, although I guess we did. If we did, however, we all just brought a few cans to school and that was the end of it. We most certainly did not take time out of school to form a human chain to the Wheeling Township Offices and Food Pantry, which like today, were located just down the street from my school.

Having gone to the food pantry as a kid because we needed food and now being a regular donor, my heart swelled with pride in today's youth when I read this story about the students at Thomas Middle School. 872 students and 101 faculty and staff collected over 5,000 cans of food - more than double what they collected last year. WOW.

Summer is one of the hardest times for food pantries. Donations are down and demand is up. Demand is up because parents who rely on the free or reduced-fee breakfast and lunch programs to help them stretch their meager food budgets (usually food stamps) are suddenly without that supplement when school ends in early June.

I'm delivering a box of food to Wheeling Township tomorrow and I'll be bringing extra veggies from my garden later this summer. If we all just add a few extra items to our carts every time we shop for groceries, it's not a strain on anyone's budget and in no time we'll have a full bag to drop off at the food pantry. Many stores run "buy one, get one free" specials and these are great times to get extra items at no cost.

Will you join me in collecting food for your food pantry this summer? If less than 900 middle school kids can donate more than 5,000 cans of food, what can we do?

Read the article below and watch the video.

Arlington Heights students make dent in need at food pantry
By Deborah Donovan, Daily Herald Staff, May 29, 2009

Is it a world's record if 872 middle school students and 101 staff members pass cans and other nonperishable food items they've donated from hand to hand for at least five blocks?

The students at Thomas Middle School, 1430 N. Belmont Ave., Arlington Heights, collected more than 5,000 containers of food, and Friday they stretched out from the school door to a truck waiting across the street from the Wheeling Township Food Pantry, 1616 N. Arlington Heights Road.

While village authorities let them block streets like E. Lynnwood Ave., closing Arlington Heights Road during the morning rush hour was not an option.

The school is hoping to create a new category for the Guinness Book of World Records, said Jason A. Dietz, assistant principal: Longest human chain passing food.

The weather was gorgeous, the students were only getting out of homeroom, but things were more complicated than you might think.

Believe it or not, the food--two or three times what they collected last year -- did not move in a smooth-flowing chain. Miscues caused cans and boxes to fall to the grass or sidewalk. Sometimes nothing seemed to be coming down the line, but then Danielle Stasik, 13, was juggling so many items that a classmate popped one into the hood of her sweatshirt.

Small groups of students -- usually eighth graders like Abbey Groves, 14, and her friends -- served as unofficial quality control experts, pulling out damaged cans and packages. Groves also pretended to confiscate a box of tea when she noticed it was her favorite brand.

All kinds of nonperishable items were donated from tins of tuna to boxes of breakfast cereal and plastic bottles of syrup and of course cans of pork and beans.

"I'm collecting good dinner ideas," said Victoria Self, a teaching assistant who lives in Inverness. "I've never seen some of these brands."

All year the students sponsored projects that demonstrated kindness and compassion to others, said Dietz.

"The students and staff at Thomas have worked hard to start a 'chain reaction' of kindness and compassion for others," he said. "Creating a human hand chain and passing the cans allows everyone to be a part of something special."

What Brings You to Little Merry Sunshine?

One of my favorite things about my blog is checking out my Site Meter site stats and learning what brings you, my loyal readers, to Little Merry Sunshine.

Quite a few of you find me by doing Google searches for "little merry sunshine," "wheeling township food pantry," "arlington heights," "Marshall Field's" and a variety of searches for information on the current local elections in Arlington Heights and I'm incredibly grateful my blog appears in the results for all of these search terms. I'm also grateful to my blog buddies Monkey Muck, Gourmet Goddess, Boxer Rebellion, She's An American Girl, Living Oprah, Ellen of the Tenth, and Fran I Am for their links and the readers who find me through their sites. I could never write this post without showing proper appreciation to Chicago's Best Blogs for the new readers they've sent me. Truly it's an honor being one of Chicago's Best Blogs.

But many of you visit LMS as the result of some more interesting Google searches . . .

An employee at one of the country's largest banks and recipient of tons of bailout money, spent some valuable work time searching "I get off on you getting off on me" and found my post iPhone, Therefore I Get Off.

Numerous state employees in states such as Nebraska, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana (on state time!) and folks at some very esteemed higher education institutions have visited LMS as the result of searches for "stripper poles" (finding I'm Gonna Install A Stripper Pole!)and "prostitute names" (finding The Name Game).

People from all over the world searching for "AK-47" find my post What Were They Hunting With That AK-47?

More than a few folks are curious about "pregnant women wearing braces," which I find interesting since there are no pregnant women on this site. Really. No woman on this blog is pregnant. I swear.

Many of you are searching for food pantries in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and it's my wish that you're doing these searches because you want to donate, but probably some of you need some extra help these days. So this gives me a good opportunity to say to everyone: Donate to your local food pantry. They desperately need your help. The demand is greater than ever and if you set aside just a couple items each week, in no time you'll have a full bag of groceries that will really help someone. That someone could be your neighbor or your best friend or someday it could be you.

Many of you seem to be interested in recycling and tax credits for greening your home and installing solar attic fans. Visit my brother's website, Crystal Skylights. He'll take great care of you.

However you ended up here, I truly thank you and I hope you come back often. Without you, I'd just be talking to myself.

Back on My Soapbox: Help Your Local Food Pantries!

Do you feel like I rant about this topic endlessly? Well I do carry on about it quite a bit. But one of my core beliefs is that we are obligated to help those less fortunate than us and it's unconscionable to me that so many people in our society go hungry every day.

It's simply not that difficult or expensive to donate extra food to local food pantries. And food donations have an incredible immediate impact in ways that other donations don't. We must have food to live. Children must have proper nutrition to grow up healthy. Going to school on an empty stomach has been shown to cause kids to have trouble with concentration, etc.

I don't know anyone who is unaffected by the current economic situation and you may be thinking that you simply don't have any extra money to buy a bunch of food for others. I beg to differ. Grocery stores are constantly offering buy one, get one free specials. Every weekend when I review the coupon inserts, I often find coupons for free items. Rather than toss out the coupons you won't use, why not use them to buy items for the food pantry? Buy one or two extra items each week and in no time you'll have a bag of food to drop-off at your local pantry. Clean out your own pantry. Do you have items you bought and haven't eaten, but are not expired yet (food pantries don't take expired food)? I'm sure you do. We all do. Pack them up.

In addition to donations being down and demand being up because of the current economic crisis, food pantries also have another blow against them: the peanut recall. Think about it. A staple in many homes is peanut butter. But because of the peanut recall, food pantries are forced to toss out otherwise perfectly good food in order to avoid sickening any of their clients.

The bottom line is food pantries desperately need our help. Will you join me in easing their burden?

Can You Help Spread Thanksgiving Cheer?

The economy is suffering and as a result more families than ever are turning to food pantries for help, especially as the holidays approach. Food pantries, however, are in a Catch-22. The need is far greater than normal (whatever that is), but donations are down significantly. And as a result, food pantries aren't able to provide assistance to as all families.

Donating to food pantries isn't just something I write about like a broken record. It's actually personal to me.

Shortly after my parents divorced when I was 12, my mom was unemployed and studying to pass the real estate test and earn her real estate license. We had no money. Child support payments from my dad were sporadic and there was no alimony. Truly, we had no money. Rather than ask my grandmother for money, my mom applied for food stamps and signed my brother and me up for the free lunch program at school. I remember I was mortified. I was terrified my friends would find out and no longer be my friends. In junior high, image was everything. I even had to work as a runner on picture day at school that year in order to get free school pictures.

My most vivid memory of that year, however, was going to the food pantry with my mom to pick up donated food so that we'd have a Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't want to go, but my mom made me. And almost 25 years later, I'm still grateful she did.

A few weeks later, we went back to pick up donated food and gifts for Christmas.

My brother and I were two of the kids on the giving tree that year. I was in 8th grade, but whomever got my name must have misunderstood because I received underwear for an 8 year old as my donated Christmas present. The look on my mom's face on that Christmas morning as I opened my present meant for a little girl, not a teenager, was one of the saddest looks I've ever seen. I could tell she felt broken, but she tried to hide it. No parent wants to feel like they've failed their children and I know that's how she felt.

Although I was momentarily disappointed at having received essentially nothing for Christmas that year, I learned the value of compassion and helping others. It was more important that someone had generously given than what they gave. And I knew that it was more important that we still had a home, had food on the table, and were together than whether I received any presents.

We only spent a year or so on food stamps and I only remember that one holiday season receiving donated food and gifts (although there may have been another year), but the memories of that year depending on the kindness of strangers will never leave me. I know it's made me more compassionate and less judgemental of those on hard times. And each year, no matter what, I always donate to my local food pantry and giving tree.

So please please give to your local food pantry, even though you may be struggling. The smallest donation will make a huge difference. You may never know the lives you will touch, but I assure you that your act of kindness will change the life of someone. It changed mine.