“Because I fall right in the gray area income-wise for a family of three, I no longer qualify for SNAP and can struggle saving money to buy groceries even with efficient budgeting.”
“The end of the pay month gets difficult to afford food. Food pantries tend to have prepackaged items that have too much salt, sugar, and or carbs for diabetics or people with high blood pressure.”
“If you’re hungry, you can’t work. If you can’t work, you can’t eat. If you don’t have food or a job, you can’t get a place to live because if you can’t eat you can’t get a job to support that house, and housing is even harder to get than food.”
That’s what three of our neighbors said about their struggles. It isn’t easy to tell if someone we know or see around town is having a hard time getting enough healthy food. However, in Franklin County, 9,650 of our neighbors are food-insecure. That’s a 53 percent increase since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. One in five Franklin County children (2,480 local kids) are considered food-insecure, representing a 71 percent increase.
People who don’t have their basic needs met have a hard time focusing on anything else. Children who are hungry can’t focus on schoolwork, adults who are worried about having enough food to feed their families can’t focus on their work.
These stark realities are the reason that Community Action’s Franklin County Hunger Task Force is calling for a Franklin County Hunger Action Week for Sept. 20-26. We have three goals:
■To highlight and understand the issue of hunger in Franklin County;
■To shine a light on and support local programs that provide food for our hungry neighbors every day;
■To come together as a community to address root causes of hunger so that fewer of our neighbors need emergency food programs.
For decades, many Franklin County programs have helped provide food for our community. In the last six months, Franklin County has stepped up even more to help our neighbors impacted by the COVID epidemic:
■Blessed Sacrament Church turned their Bread of Life program into a drive-thru grocery distribution at Beacon Field in Greenfield;
■Good Neighbors Food Pantry in Charlemont doubled its distributions;
■Community Action’s Center for Self-Reliance Food Pantry transitioned within days from a ‘choice’ food pantry to pre-bagged grocery pick up;
■Just Roots Community Farm in Greenfield partnered with Stone Soup Café to make their Feastivals meals available to more folks in the community;
■Stone Soup Café’s to-go and delivered meals are nourishing twice as many folks as they did pre-COVID, including folks who can’t get to All Souls Church in Greenfield to pick up a meal.
These are just a few programs that help our hungry neighbors in Franklin County. The demand has increased, and many programs are having a tough time meeting that demand. Please reach out and support the programs listed here (http://bit.ly/SupportFCFoodPrograms).
While it is crucial to support programs feeding folks today, it isn’t enough.
This is the reality: too many households have had a hard time getting enough nutritious food for too many years. Food pantries and meal programs have fed our neighbors for decades. We do that well. And, it is time for us to come together as community to take action that will make structural changes so fewer of our neighbors face the “should I buy my medicine or pay the rent or buy food for my family” dilemma.
Franklin County Hunger Action Week, Sept. 20-26, is hosted by Community Action’s Franklin County Hunger Task Force to encourage everyone to take action to overcome hunger in our community. Organizations, businesses, faith communities, individuals, and families all can take action.
The week will:
■Highlight the strength of community engagement;
■Tell stories of hunger in our community;
■Provide facts and information;
■Include engaging virtual events;
■Provide opportunities for action and activism.
Follow our Facebook page to learn more: https://www.facebook.com/FCHungerTaskForce
Or contact Mary McClintock at fcrn@communityaction.us to get Hunger Action Week information.
The anthropologist David Graeber recently passed away. He said, The ultimate, hidden truth of the world, is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
Franklin County Hunger Action Week asks us all to help make a different world, a world where everyone has enough nutritious food to eat. Together, we can make that world. Together, we can end hunger.
Justin Costa is the coordinator of Community Action’s Center For Self-Reliance Food Pantries. Mary McClintock is Community Action’s Community Collaboration coordinator for Franklin County. Costa and McClintock co-chair the Franklin County Hunger Task Force, a program of Community Action. To learn more about the Task Force, email Mary at fcrn@communityaction.us.