We are trying something new this year – not only are we highlighting delicious foods, but we are inviting pastry chefs to create food themed cakes commemorating our 30^th Anniversary.  I can’t wait to see the unique and creative designs the chefs cook up!  Guests will also be able to vote on their favorite cake and then sample it later.  Some of the chefs coming up with sweet creations are Michel Richard, Josh Short, David Guas, among others. 

This is the CAFB’s 7^th  Blue Jeans Ball and my 4^th year leading the charge as the Special Events Manager; and it has been exciting to see how it’s grown.  I believe that people keep coming back because they are experiencing something different than what the other galas offer.  Guests can relax, eat delicious food, bid on unique live and silent auction items, and most importantly, support a great cause – the issue of hunger. You can’t beat that!

No need to think about it any further, join us on Sunday, March 28^th at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel!  Click here to get your reservation now.  Hope to see you there…making a statement in your jeans!

As we focused on keeping our families safe and began digging ourselves out, perhaps we didn’t think quite as much about those less fortunate than us. At the Capital Area Food Bank, we continued to provide food for our agencies and our various programs. When we were finally able to open our doors, agencies flooded in to restock their depleted resources. However, during the month of record snow, we experienced a decline in donations. In comparison to February 2009, food drives and individual donations were down 63% for the month.

Since February is a short month, it left just as quickly as it began. Now that the snow is melting, we are looking forward to sunshine and food drives! If you are interested in holding a food drive at your office, school, organization, or place of worship – we need your support. To begin, download the Food Drive Kit.

Let’s make March a month that makes a difference!

Did you know that in the D.C. Metropolitan Area working people represent more than half of those struggling with hunger?  Did you know that hunger in this area is up 25 percent over 2006 stats? Statistics from Hunger in America 2010. These new statistics and more are revealed during monthly scheduled tours at the Capital Area Food Bank.

Determined to raise awareness about hunger in the Washington Metropolitan area, the food bank began giving tours to the public just over two years ago. Perhaps you’ve heard about the CAFB, our mission to alleviate hunger and provide skills to help those at risk of hunger become independent of the need for emergency food services.  But there is so much more to tell. Perhaps the scope of hunger in our community is still a vague statistic to you. We will show you how we help the many thousands of our neighbors who come to us for help in feeding themselves and their families and we will bring those impersonal statistics down to individual stories you will find, surprisingly, in many cases not too different than your own.

The Capital Area Food Bank distributes food, but it also provides education and skill-building opportunities that build community capacity to address the issues of hunger and poverty.  We just added a new program to our ranks that does just that – the DC Farm to School Network (the Network).  The Network works to connect D.C. schools with healthy, locally-grown foods to serve in their cafeteria meals. It’s a non-traditional program of the Food Bank – not about food distribution directly, but about developing the capacity for the District to nourish and educate vulnerable youth – to the tune of over 100,000 meals each day.

Farm to school programs connect local farmers with local schools so that more healthy, local foods are served in school cafeterias.  They also offer hands-on education about food, health, nutrition and the environment (in the form of school gardens, farm field trips, chef demos, and more).  Farm to school programs get kids excited about eating healthy, local foods because they look and taste better.  And we all know how important it is for kids to eat healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, especially when the District has one of the highest child obesity rates in the nation.

If we look at child poverty rates, Washington, DC has the highest of all the states. Low-income students don’t have to pay, or pay very little, for school meals because they’re subsidized by the federal government. In the District, about three out of every four students qualify for subsidized (free or reduced-price) meals.  As a result, many low-income children get their main meals each day at school.

The food bank sees school meals as an opportunity to nourish youth in the District on a large scale – many of whom are at risk of hunger.  We see school meal reform efforts as a down payment on the future of kids who will grow to inherit this city.  Learn more about what we’re doing to make farm to school programs happen in the District at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

Do you think school nutrition and farm to school are important?  Testify at the Healthy Schools Act hearing on Friday, March 26th!  More information at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

Because of their determination, all of our Kids Cafe® sites received the food they need to serve their afterschool meals and our Weekend Bag sites were able to replenish their supply of weekend bags to send home on Friday.  Our partner sites truly appreciate the dedication and commitment that our drivers demonstrated last week!

Video footage taken by John Huber, Food For Kids Assistant

It seems like agencies that serve underprivileged people are always stretched to their limits.  So our challenge with the FGU program is to help agencies to learn about how to grow, store, and prepare fresh produce in a way that is exciting, but also manageable for busy agency staff members. Ultimately, our goal is to not only provide healthy food to front line organizations, but to help them become their own source of fresh produce through farmers markets, urban gardening, and partnerships with local growers.

Some agencies are a little hesitant at first, but they get the hang of it in no time. After two years of participating in the FGU Fresh Produce Grant, Martha’s Table has started growing their own produce on location! Last summer they built raised, movable garden beds in an underutilized parking lot by their trash bins.  This will be a learning tool for the kids in their daycare program. Bounty from the garden will supplement the produce received from Clagett farm to help feed kids in the daycare, as well as folks from the “McKenna’s Wagon” mobile food pantry. Growing in the beds are wax beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, kale, celery, morning glories, and lots of herbs. They even built a trashcan compost which can be easily rolled for aeration.  Check out the Martha’s Table post to see the whole story of their urban garden adventure!

Aromatic herbs help deter the smell from the trash bins behind them.

Can you believe they did all this in a matter of weeks? Go Martha’s Table!

The FGU Fresh Produce Grant is a partnership project of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Clagett Farm and the CAFB with the goal of providing up to 50% of Clagett’s harvest to low-income individuals in the Washington, DC metro area.  We invite you to help us Share the Harvest by contributing to this wonderful collaboration. For more information about the FGU Fresh Produce Grant, or to get an application for your CAFB agency visit our FGU page.

We will be open Saturday from 9am – 12pm and 1pm – 4pm to pack for our Weekend Bag and Senior Brown Bags programs. Our Senior Brown Bag program provides nearly 2,200 low-income seniors with food every month. The Weekend Bags program sends 5-7 pounds of shelf stable food home with children every Friday to supplement their family’s food for the weekend. Patricia Massey, a coordinator for the program, stated “children are especially in need since schools have been closed.”

It’s easy to help. Just email volunteer@capitalareafoodbank.org or call 202-526-5344, ext. 241 to sign up. You will receive a confirmation and directions upon receipt of your call or email. Thank you for your support!

 The Event

Children sat coloring the food pyramid as donors, OSSE representatives, long-time volunteers, and advocacy partners from Feeding America and DC Hunger Solutions were welcomed in to the site. 

We had four speakers at our event.  Lynn spoke to the group about the importance of food and our work in the community.  I spoke to the group about the ongoing goals of Kids Cafe.  Steve Park spoke to the group about the children’s programs at Little Lights Urban Ministries and the impact that Kids Cafe will make at their site.  Daniel Nestel discussed the volunteer projects his family leads at Beth El Temple and why he finds this work so important.

After the speakers, Jeff Poch led the children in a nutrition activity talking about the food groups.  Then he and the children made guacamole and the salsa for tacos.  The children enjoyed a dinner of bean and turkey tacos with lots of veggies on whole-wheat tortillas, a side of fruit salad, triscuits, and milk and juice. 

The CAFB is now serving over 478,000 people through a network of partner agencies annually.  About half of these are children.  An estimated 88,400 people receive emergency food assistance each week from a food pantry, soup kitchen or other agency served by the CAFB – 19,000 more than four years ago.

It may be surprising to learn that many of the people needing food assistance have jobs, over 50 percent. They are professional people who are underemployed, people working at minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet, even senior citizens who have had to return to the workforce.

 Hunger in America is unacceptable. We can all do something to help – donate funds or hold a fundraiser benefiting the food bank. You can also volunteer in our warehouse.  We appreciate the way the community supports our efforts by holding food drives. You can even guest write a blog post for us, retweet our messages on Twitter or follow us on Facebook.  If everyone does a little, it will go a long way. 

A topline document on Hunger in America 2010 or the entire study is available.

Planning for the class was challenging because most of the nutrition education activities were sight-dependent and needed to be modified. Instead of reading nutrition labels on cans of food, we decided to have a taste-test of canned fruit and vegetables to investigate sugar and sodium levels. Instead of showing pictures of food portion sizes, our nutritionists created models using a 9-volt battery (cheese) and a deck of cards (meat). We utilized activities that employed the four other senses in order to teach the nutrition aspect of food.

The most challenging and awe-inspiring part of this class was the culinary aspect. When asking the participants why they were taking our OFL class, the majority of the responses were, “To gain some independence by learning to cook better on my own.” There were a variety of skill levels, from experienced household chefs to those who had never correctly chopped an onion. One woman who was brought in by her daughter told us, “I never liked to cook especially now that I’m losing my vision, but being with others in this class who are blind and cook for themselves makes me believe that I can do it too.”

Chef Mitch Greene, a two-time volunteer for Operation Frontline, had experience with this type of class as he had taught with the program before. One day during class, Chef Mitch decided to teach the class how to cut an onion, a seemingly impossible task. Yet the descriptive instructions created a vivid mental image for the participants which made the skill easy to pick up. It became clear that it didn’t suffice to just point something out; the vibrance of the details was equally important.

To get a better perspective on the class, the class leaders and I even tried cooking at home with our eyes closed. The experience was a bit disorienting and even terrifying but it instantly became clear why confidence in the kitchen had the power to provide greater independence. Learning to cook for oneself is a fundamental skill that should be taught to everyone, regardless of age, gender or even disability.

It doesn’t matter what skills you already have, anyone can cook. In our Columbia Lighthouse class, it was often the blind who actually had the strongest vision on life.

This post is also on the Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry blog.