01 April 2009

April Food Day: Bloggers Fighting Hunger


In December, 2008 the number of Food Stamp participants in the US numbered 31,784,453, the largest number on record. It's also the latest figure available, it that count of nearly 32 million was an increase of over 700,000 from the previous month. That's an enormous number of people.

Food stamps don't come close to feeding someone with anything resembling a balanced diet and food stamp recipients have to make some odd food choices. Check out this video from CNN. A reporter, Sean Callebs, lived on a food stamp budget for a month and in this video he talks about his experience.



Embedded video from CNN Video

Food stamp recipients, and needy people who can't get food stamps, depend on the nation's food banks in ways no one could have imagined a year ago. But the good news is that a dollar in the hands of Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest) can turn into 10 pounds of food for the needy. The need's not unique to the US either. My Canadian readers can participate in April Food Day with a donation to Food Banks Canada. If you'd like to participate in April Food Day, all we're asking is that you donate a buck. That's it. A dollar in the hands of a food bank can turn into seven meals. If you're motivated to give more, know this: $25 will make 75 meals for your needy countrymen. It's not magic but it feels good to make a tangible difference.

You'll see this logo scattered around the Internet as a bunch of us are posting on the same topic today. Whether it's here or somewhere else or on your own in your own time, think about making a donation to the nation's hungry.

Many thanks to Meg Fairfax Fielding from Pigtown Design and Chris Cox from Easy and Elegant Life for putting all this together.

Now remember those links. It's Feeding America in the US, and Food Banks Canada for Canada, obviously. If you'd like to make a donation from or for somewhere else in the world, here's the link to Feed the Children.

9 comments:

  1. Like Anne Frank wrote

    "No one has ever become poor by giving".

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  2. Bravo Mel! Is there a food bank in The Netherlands or does your social safety net do a good enough job on its own? Come to think of it, how do the nations of western Europe, specifically The Netherlands, deal with poverty and hunger?

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  3. My church does a food drive every year near Easter. I am dropping my food donations off today.

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  4. Thanks so much, Paul! It's fun seeing our logo all over everyone's blogrolls!

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  5. I'm glad to lend my voice and my platform Meg. It's pretty cool to see how the blogosphere has banded together to push April Food Day. Behold the power of "new media!"

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  6. Hi Paul,

    Here in the Netherlands we got good social insurance systems.

    We dont have foodstamps. For the people who need it there is the Food Bank and other social safety nets.

    But their is poverty, we just had a similar campagne as April Food Day. Becaus the Food bank are runnig low on goods through the economic crisis.

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  7. Just fantastic. Eliminating hunger is something I really care about and I didn't even know about April Food Day until after. I wish I could've blogged about it in my personal blog like the rest of you guys but I guess I'm two days too late. :(

    - Imee

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  8. It's never too late Imee. Thanks for the comment. April Food Day was a grass roots thing that got started by two bloggers a couple of weeks ago. They are based in Washington DC and they spread the word virally; they told their blogging friends who told their blogging friends and so on. I'm sorry you missed it. They will do another one next year and it will be better publicized. In the meantime, you can always post about it after the fact. It's never too late to try to take a dent out of world hunger. Thanks for your comment!

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