The most recent government figures confirm the distressing news that most of us already know: the poverty rate is rising. We used to think we knew what the face of poverty looked like: the stereotype of people with hard luck tales who were born     to  -- or slid into -- poverty, people we know we should help, but people who are reassuringly “other” and not like ourselves. I’m not sure that stereotype ever was true, but certainly the current economic hard times have shaken that stereotype. These days, those needing extra help are just as likely to be the shell-shocked former middle class whose closets may still hold the designer labels from their previous lives, but whose pantries are empty.  Many of these newer poor were caught unprepared for the length and breadth of this economic downturn; some found themselves looking for a place to live when their houses were foreclosed, some faced a simultaneous health crisis and loss of insurance, and some just found themselves crushed by debt they accrued when they thought their jobs would last through the payments.

This is National Food Bank Week and our nation’s food banks, which always have struggled to meet the demand of the nation’s hungry, now find themselves trying to feed a whole new set of poor people. In fact, Feeding America, a network of 205 food banks and 63,000 charitable feeding agencies, reports that the demand for emergency food has risen above the past year’s demand by about a third nationwide, and much of that demand is driven by first-time users of food banks and people who have lost their jobs.

What draws the “new” poor to the food banks is what has always drawn people: the need to put food on the family table. Feeding America reports that, while the increase in the use of food banks is similar nationwide, each region has its own story. A Florida food bank reports that the construction industry has been in decline for the past couple of years, and construction workers who used to be donors, now need the food bank themselves. In Arizona, the declining construction industry has combined with the area’s high number of retirees on fixed incomes, as well as falling copper prices that affected jobs at local mines. The auto industry woes have hit Michigan and other areas of the Midwest. Rural areas such as in Oklahoma report that plant closings and falling crop prices have resulted in increased food bank traffic.

The Community Food Bank in Fresno, CA, told Feeding America, “Thousands of our clients each week stand in line for hours… in triple-digit weather just so they can have something to feed their families since their agriculture-related jobs have disappeared…”

In Virginia, one food bank says, “Last year’s donors are this year’s clients.”

And Florida -- which knows a thing or two about natural disasters -- says, “We are distributing at ‘disaster relief’ levels for the past six months…It’s a slow-moving disaster.”

The Sodexo Foundation is committed to supporting our fellow citizens who are in need and has made more than $11 million in grants to hunger-related organizations. Sodexo has contributed more than $14 million in in-kind donations to hunger relief organizations. For those of us who still have our jobs, we should mark National Food Bank Week by making a donation to a food bank. Because the face of poverty isn’t the face of a stranger, if it ever was. It’s become the face of our neighbor.