.jpg)
"Mahalo,” -- Hawaiian for “thank you” -- says the greeting card so big it covers the desk. Another oversized card has a note addressed to “Dear People I Don’t Know…” and it talks about seeing hungry and sad children start to smile because they have food. Most people think of Hawaii as a tropical paradise, with happy residents surfing and basking in the sun. But in this island paradise there are children whose summertime is not carefree, but filled with the anguish of not knowing if they will get anything to eat each day. When schools close and the federally-subsidized school lunch programs end, children in Hawaii and throughout the nation are left to fend for themselves to find something to eat. With growing unemployment, more people are turning to food pantries and soup kitchens for help….but food pantries’ donations have declined.
Where can our nation’s most vulnerable citizens turn for help?
There are no easy solutions – but Sodexo has a program that offers some help. Feeding Our Future is a Sodexo Foundation-funded program created to make sure that there are no “vacations from lunch” for those children who depend on school programs for their nutrition. Established in 1997, Feeding Our Future is operating in 20 cities across the U.S., from Honolulu to Boston. Funding for this program comes from the Sodexo Foundation as well as the generosity of many of our vendor partners who provide some of the food and help this program succeed.
The program out of the University of Hawaii distributed 13,530 meals to Boys and Girls Clubs this summer, who fed children what was likely their only meal of the day. The children ate sandwiches and several hot meals each week, and as summer ended, they sent photos of themselves eating Sodexo lunches to say “mahalo.”
At another Feeding Our Future program, hundreds of children – from pre-school to high school – showed up at the Andrew & Walter Young YMCA in downtown Atlanta for food and fun. Some children too poor to join the YMCA had gotten in the habit of sneaking into the building to try to find food. Any time there was food left over from the lunch program, the “sneak-in” kids were invited to eat. No child was turned away according to the YMCA’s Executive Director, Diane Baker King.
This week, the program winds up with a big barbecue, with all the program’s children, senior citizens who can not afford meals, and the “sneak-ins” invited to sit down and enjoy hot dogs, hamburgers, garden burgers and cookies. Sodexo employees will fire up the grills and serve the food, most of it outside but some served in classrooms because the younger children’s “little legs won’t even reach the floor under the picnic table,” says James Winkler, Sodexo’s Corporate Services General Manager in Atlanta.
Baker King says the Feeding Our Future program has made a huge difference.
“People say there are not words to express it and it’s a cliché but it’s true,” she says. “We have the opportunity to practice what we teach. Food always brings people together, it calms the atmosphere. To be able to have that source in the midst of an economic crisis is more than a blessing.”
There are more than 13 million children in America who are at risk of hunger. I’d like to know where is the moral outrage? Why does this tragedy continue year after year? I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas for solutions or if you want to help, there is lots you can do.