You Make Feeding the State's Hungry Possible
By Terry Shannon, president & CEO of St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance
St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance is able to distribute enough food into the community each day to provide more than 275,000 meals to those in need. That equals more than 72 million pounds of food a year.
It’s an impressive number. And it is a number that would be impossible to achieve without the generous donations of our donors – donors like you.
The statistics are daunting: Arizona ranks second in the nation in terms of poverty rates. One in five Arizonans lives with hunger. In our state, one in four children faces going to bed hungry. One in seven seniors struggles with the decision to buy food or to buy medicine or to pay the rent.
Many of the families who seek help from St. Mary’s Food Bank are working – the adults just aren’t working enough hours each month, either because of unemployment or underemployment, to make it through the month. So they come to the Food Bank seeking nutritious food to feed their families.
Fresh vegetables, fresh meat, fresh fruit. So many of the items we see every day and take for granted are luxury items for struggling families. Not having the ability to provide balanced, healthy meals on a regular basis puts their family’s health at risk, and too often, the children pay the price. We read and hear a lot these days about childhood obesity, diabetes, struggles to learn and excel at school. It simply isn’t possible to do well, for either a child or an adult, when your head hurts from lack of food, your energy sags and your attention wanders.
It all starts with food. Good, nutritious food.
So it is important for agriculture to maintain its high-volume production efforts, which through modern and efficient production, help keep food on the tables of those in need. Without large agriculture production, the food bank cannot maintain a consistent source of food or be able to afford to supply it long-term. The $10.3 billion Arizona agriculture industry is critical to helping produce the safe, nutritious food we distribute to our neighbors in need.
We could not continue to serve the growing need in Arizona without community partners like the agricultural producers across our state.
St. Mary’s Food Bank, the world’s first food bank, is proud to be able to serve more than 500 partner agencies in 700 locations around the state of Arizona, and to be able to provide more than 30,000 emergency food boxes directly to families each month. But we are a catalyst. We could not do what we do to serve our mission and our neighbors in need without the generosity of donors like you, the members of the Arizona Farm Bureau.
At this joyous time of the year with the holidays upon us, consider helping to provide food for those among us who need it the most. Your contributions will be put to immediate and good use – because no child should have to go to bed hungry.
Join us. St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. More than Food. Hope.
Editor’s Note: For more information on donating to St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, call Sharon Pederson, resource development manager at 602.615.1654. Additionally, farmers and ranchers: St. Mary’s is always looking for gleaning-project partners too.
