"The Shelves Are Bare"

A couple days ago my friend Melissa forwarded an email that prompted more than just eyebrow raising. I'm going to share it using her words:

"So I rarely do these mass emails, but my dad did this story for his paper yesterday that I found surprising and wanted to share. Basically what's happening is that food pantries are running out of food because of the crunch created by the global food shortage, rising gas prices, general economic malaise, etc. and it will only get worse as we move into summer and kids who were previously getting a/some meal(s) from the government at school will be out on vacation and thus one of more meals short. This story focuses on pantries in NJ, but it's a problem nationwide.

I know there's a lot of generally crappy news out there, but this is a rare case where it's relatively easy to do something to help. If you know of a local pantry near you, I encourage you to take food there, if not visit Second Harvest, it will tell you where the closest food bank is to you. You can either give directly to the food bank (food banks distribute donations to food pantries in the area, which then give the food to local families) if it's near you (there's one in Chicago) or call the food bank for your region to get the location of food pantries near you. The NJ pantries are looking for five key staples (mostly any kind of non-perishable protein that kids are likely to eat): soups, canned meat (think tuna rather than spam, sorry Brent), peanut butter, whole fruit juice and macaroni and cheese, which I would imagine would hold across the board, but I'm sure if you call the local food bank/pantry they'll be able to tell you what they need."

If you want to read the article her father wrote, you can access it here.

I'm trying to organize a food drive in my office and will keep you posted with the results.