The numbers are staggering. Yet, all of these people are classified as food insecure. Food insecure doesn’t mean you don’t have enough to eat, but that you don’t have enough healthy and nutritious food to eat. The government calls healthy food a “specialty crop”. The cost of these crops has risen by 24% since 1980. Many food prices have been kept low, but they are mostly processed foods that are high in fat, sugar, and other ingredients that are not healthy. If you’re hungry and your finances are limited, you will buy what you can afford.

“Heat or Eat”. In the winter, people who are food insecure have to make the decision – do I keep my family warm or do I feed them. The summer is a challenging time for families with young children. While in school, many children have access to a free breakfast and/or lunch. Once school is our, parents must find new sources of food to provide for their children. 20% of American households have a member who is a veteran or has served in the U.S. military. Hunger among the more than 12 million U. s. Veterans over 60 is reaching critical levels. Senior citizen veterans often avoid signing up for government food aid and will go so far as to deny they even need help.

Eliminating hunger is a year round challenge. Many people feel charitable during Thanksgiving and Christmas and donate an abundance of food to food banks, pantries, and similar organizations. It’s an amazing yet overwhelming time for these organizations as they receive and distribute all of these donations. In Chester County there are over 90 different agencies that distribute food to local residents. After the holidays, agencies are challenged with continuing to support these people with fewer donations. To help agencies decrease food insecurity year round, nonperishable food drives become more and more instrumental and are critical to local food banks and pantries. Food drives are easy to coordinate and can provide a steady supply of food directly to those in need. Fiorenza’s Food for Friends (F4) has established a process to engage businesses in their local community by coordinating nonperishable food drives.

Why would a business want to have a food drive?

• It demonstrates a company’s commitment to the local community.
• It provides an avenue for employees to give back to the community in which they work.
• It can foster a spirit of service and teamwork.
• It will be anew source of food to a local pantry!
• It can help to end hunger in a local community.
• It can create great PR for both the donating business and the local agency.

Once a business agrees to have a food drive, F4 will develop a plan that meets the company culture and ensures that the event will be fun and engaging for their employees. F4 then partners the business with a local recipient agency that distributes food to the hungry. This partnership not only helps to provide food for those in need, it also educates the employees about a local agency in need of community support.

Food drives can include a list of suggested healthy of kid friendly food items or focus on a particular item such as: peanut butter for National Peanut Butter month, or tuna fish for an event called “How to Catch a Tuna”. To make the drive fun, the business might decide to make it a little competitive between offices in different locations, or departments within an organization. (F4 recently participated in a competitive drive conducted by Bishop Shanahan that collected 4,248 pounds of food).

F4 has developed a Non-Perishable Food Drive Kid to support organizations with coordinating their drives. Food drives are a fun easy way to involve families, friends, students, and co-workers to help eliminate hunger in the communities where they live and work. It is a great way to increase awareness of this growing problem in the U.S. If you want to learn more about F4, please visit our website or our Facebook page. If you are interested in having a food drive, please contact Brenda Russell at brussell@f4service.org.

Download Flyer