The familiar Check Out Hunger tickets

CHECK-OUT HUNGER RETURNS FOR 20th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

HILLSIDE, N.J. – Check-Out Hunger, an annual front-end awareness and fund raiser for the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, will be marking its 20th year milestone this fall. This campaign, which began in New Jersey, is run at supermarket chains across the northeast.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey reports that need for nutritious food is up 30-40 percent at its partner agencies (soup kitchens, pantries, shelters, etc) this year.

In 2009 Check-Out Hunger crossed the $2 Million plateau for the first time. The campaign raised $2,093,086 for food banks across the state. Since 1992, millions of people have supported the program at food markets and online at www.checkouthungernj.org.

Participating food markets include A&P, Food Basics, Foodtown, Kings, Pathmark, Shop Rite, Super Fresh, Wawa, and Wegmans.

This campaign was developed by the Community FoodBank in conjunction with the New Jersey Food Council and supermarket chains with headquarters in New Jersey. Currently the Community FoodBank of New Jersey administers the regional campaign with 14 chains for 32 food banks and affiliates in 9 states and the District of Columbia.

The Community FoodBank of New Jersey, a member of Feeding America, distributed 35 million pounds of food in the last year to people in need in 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties. Its staff and volunteers fight hunger and poverty not only through the distribution of food and grocery products, but by education and training, and by creating new programs to meet the needs of low-income people. The Community FoodBank of New Jersey has earned Charity Navigator’s highest honor, a four-star rating.

Here’s how people can help:

• Right in their own neighborhood. Shoppers will find a display of Check-Out Hunger donation slips at the checkout aisles in their local food stores.
• Right in their own home. People can donate through the Check-Out Hunger in New Jersey website at www.checkouthungernj.org.
  Also, just a reminder that the retail partners run the campaign at varying times from late September through the end of January, with the bulk of the food stores running it in November and December. There are a list of participating stores on the website.

So, folks, if you’re at the checkout counter and you see the different colored tickets like in the image above, consider donating a few bucks to help the Community FoodBank of New Jersey out this holiday season. Thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends –

Here at Food Democracy Now! we wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving. We all have a lot to be thankful for this time of year and believe it’s important to take time to honor the incredible work that America’s family farmers do each day, rising early and working late to help put healthy, safe and nutritious food on our tables.

More importantly, we wanted to take a moment to stand up for those that are less fortunate and cannot provide for themselves at this time.

A recent report by the USDA found that 1 in 4 children in America are now on the brink of hunger. This is a sad and sobering statistic: to think that in the “land of opportunity” any child would go hungry, let alone more than 16.7 million.1

Tell your Senator that no child in America should go hungry, that they need to act today.
Fortunately, for America’s needy children Senator Gillibrand (D-NY) recently introduced important legislation to protect and prevent children from going hungry called The Access to Nutritious Meals for Young Children Act (S.2749). If passed, this bill will improve children’s access to healthy meals in child care centers, family child care homes, and Head Start and Early Head Start programs.2

Consider this…

A recent USDA report found that 14.6% of U.S. households, or some 49 million – 1 in 7 Americans – suffered from going hungry at some point in the year 2008, a significant increase from 2007. In 2008 the number of children going hungry in the U.S. reached a record 16.7 million – or 22.5%. That’s 4.3 million more than in 2007.3

Experts believe that the number of Americans experiencing “food insecurity” will climb steadily in 2009 as hard economic times and unemployment continues in the near future.
Help protect those who need it most – our children – by sending this letter to your Senators.

Today, we are also most thankful for you, our community of supporters at Food Democracy Now!. Thank you for joining us and using your voice to create a more just and sustainable food system for future generations that supports us all.

Have a Healthy and Enjoyable Thanksgiving!

Sustainably yours,
Dave Lisa and The Food Democracy Now! Team

If you’d like to see our grassroots work continue, please consider donating as little as $10 to Food Democracy Now! http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/25?akid=46.18844.F285wT&t=1 Thanks for your support!

P.S. We’d also like to take a moment to thanks some of the great organizations that are making sustainable change happen on the ground that we’ve worked with over the past year, including: Farm Aid, Food & Water Watch, Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, National Family Farm Coalition, The Center for Food Safety, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, The Land Institute, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Organic Valley, Organic Consumers Association, the Cornacopia Institute, Pesticide Action Network, Roots of Change, Slow Food, Food, Inc., Food Fight, King Corn, Big River, and all the family farmers and sustainable food advocates we’ve met along the way.

Sources:

1. 1 in 7 Americans Went Hungry in 2008, CBS News, Nov. 16, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/83?akid=46.18844.F285wT&t=1

2. Gillibrand Introduces Legislation To Improve Nutrition For Young Children, Press Release Senator Gillibrand, Nov. 11, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/84?akid=46.18844.F285wT&t=1

3. USDA: Number of Americans going hungry increases, Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/85?akid=46.18844.F285wT&t=1

Enjoy the rest of your holiday!

More than 35 million Americans, including 12 million children, either live with or are on the verge of hunger. In New Jersey alone, an estimated 250,000 new clients will be seeking sustenance this year from the state’s food banks. But recently, as requests for food assistance have risen, food donations are on the decline, leaving food bank shelves almost empty and hungry families waiting for something to eat.

The situation is dire, no more so than at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey (CFBNJ), the largest food bank in the state, where requests for food have gone up 30 percent, but donations are down by 25 percent. Warehouse shelves that are typically stocked with food are bare and supplies have gotten so low that, for the first time in its 25 year history, the food bank is developing a rationing mechanism.

As the state’s key distributor of food to local food banks – serving more than 500,000 people a year and providing assistance to nearly 1,700 non-profits in the state – the stability of replenishment of the CFBNJ is essential to ensuring that individuals in need have access to food.

If everyone could just do a little, it would help those in need a lot. To help, people can:

1. Make a monetary contribution: Visit www.njfoodbank.org.
2. Donate food: Drop off a bag of food at your local food pantry.
3. Organize a food drive: We can help explain the logistics of starting a food drive. Just call 908-355-FOOD.
4. Help “Check Out Hunger:” Look for the “Check Out Hunger” coupons at your local supermarket and donate. No donation is too small!

One thing that people commonly confuse is the role of the food bank. The CFBNJ is similar to a wholesale distributor, providing food to charities throughout the state, who then give this food directly to the hungry (the food bank does not give food directly to individuals). The food bank also does not accept small amounts of food, such as a cart of groceries. They encourage those donations go directly to a local food pantry or soup kitchen. Rather, the food bank accepts large quantity food donations, such as a truck full of groceries, as well as monetary donations which they stretch to purchase food at wholesale prices, such as 300 pound bags of rice.

Looking for a food pantry in your area of the state? Check out sefan.org to find one near you!

For more information on the Community Food Bank of New Jersey and to read where the statistics above came from, please download the Community Food Bank of New Jersey fact sheet by clicking here.