FALL 2009By Daniel Leone
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity
—Martin Luther King, Jr.Everyone is aware, however slightly, of how much food is wasted each day. The amount of food thrown away can be seen at the supermarket, where employees take all of the slightly bruised fruit and toss it into a bin. The waste can be seen at restaurants, where the food left over from huge servings is shoveled into the trash can. The waste can even be seen in your own home, when someone doesn’t feel well or doesn’t like the meal. Most people are also vaguely aware that there are needy people within five or ten miles of them. Strangely enough, almost no one puts these two facts together and actually does something about these problems.
Though many people find it easy to believe that people are starving in the so-called third world, people in the United States seem to think that there are no starving people in the developed world. On the contrary, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 36.2 million Americans are food insecure, including 12.6 million children. According to the government, food insecurity refers to the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources. In layman’s terms, this means that someone cannot feed themselves or their family. If 36.2 million people in America can’t feed themselves and their family, wouldn’t you think that in the richest and most developed country in the world more people would try to help? One woman understood this 25 years ago and truly rose above the narrow confines of her individualistic concerns to the concerns of all humanity.
Pamela Lawler was a 36-year-old business writer when she was at a salad bar and saw huge amounts of leftover food being thrown out. She realized that there was a tremendous amount of food going to waste while some of her neighbors were going hungry. In 1984 she quit her job and founded Philabundance, which is a nonprofit organization that uses leftovers donated by restaurants and supermarkets to feed the hungry in the Delaware Valley. The organization started out with Lawler making rounds with leftover food in her station wagon with a nine-month-old foster care baby in tow. Fairly quickly a friend of the family donated an old van, and Philabundance started to grow
Philabundance is still a nonprofit organization that feeds the hungry in the Delaware Valley, but it has grown and now feeds about 65,000 needy people each week. Philabundance carries out its mission of trying to end hunger by distributing food to the 600 member agencies in the Delaware Valley. The food reaches an estimated 900,000 low-income citizens through soup kitchens, shelter programs, and neighborhood distribution programs. However, because of the current financial crisis, donations to Philabundance have decreased by almost 40 per cent, or more than 2 million pounds of food during the last year.
Even during this financial crisis, in which many people have lost thousands of dollars, we must remember that the people who are suffering the most are those who depend on Philabundance and other programs like it. These people are not worrying about whether they will lose another thousand dollars in the stock market; they are worrying that they will not be able to feed their children that night. People in the middle and upper class need to remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s timeless quote: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” In closing, I ask that we try to rise above our individualistic concerns to the concerns of all humanity and try to make a difference in this world.
This essay won an honorable mention in the Helen Glass Essay for Peace contest, which is held annually at Friends School Mullica Hill, sponsored by Mickleton and Mullica Hill Monthly Meetings. It is copyright © 2009 by Mickleton and Mullica Hill MMs.
Other essays: by Maddy Scuderi & by Chloe PatrickRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 03:42 PM
