What are you going to do?  Issaquah Meals, a program of Catholic Community Services, said “Why the Fork”.

Issaquah Meals has been serving healthy, nutritious dinners to low-income and homeless families on the Eastside since late spring 1989.  The program, started at the request of the City of Issaquah and local churches, began serving meals two nights per week.  Two nights was not enough to meet the need and Issaquah Meals now serves 5 dinners per week.  Run almost completely by volunteers who prepare meals at the homes, IM’s kitchen is in desperate need of renovation.  Despite having very little storage capacity, no dishwasher, and cabinets and drawers that are falling apart, Issaquah Meals is seeking a partnership to expand dinner service to the weekends.

Seven days a week!  Issaquah Meals is already serving more than 700 meals per month, but it’s not enough.  Weekend dinner will allow IM to ensure that our most vulnerable Eastside neighbors have seven nutritious meals.  More meals served means that IM’s clients will be able to stretch their budgets for essentials.  In addition, Issaquah Meals will be able to join the emergency response network for the city.  IM will ensure that the community is prepared for a disaster by storing emergency rations on site.

YOU can help Issaquah Meal and 11 other local hunger relief organizations with a donation at http://whythefork.org. Through April 14, all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar. That means that your gift will be doubled!

A kitchen renovation will help Issaquah Meals serve more low-income and homeless families on the Eastside.  So, say Why the Fork and ensure that Issaquah Meals can expand their outreach and services!

Please click here now to stick a fork in hunger! Give today, and tomorrow more people will eat. Thank you for helping end hunger in our community.

Like this: Do you know how large the gap between SNAP and Basic Food benefits and he price of Halal food is?  It’s big enough that most low-income Muslim families have exhausted their benefits by mid-month.  Compounding this problem is a Food Bank system that does not have the resources to receive and store donations of Halal foods.   Finally, most food banks don’t have the expertise to properly teach volunteers about the needs of the low-income Muslim community.

The Somali Youth and Family Club aims to change that.

The Somali Youth and Family Club has been serving the Islamic community in Seattle and King County in culturally appropriate ways since the summer of 2008.  They have built relationships with local Mosques, Islamic organizations, and the Muslim business community in order to reach out to and serve low-income Muslim families.  The Club has strong relationships with the families they serve and are building the capacity to help even more low-income Washingtonians.

Halal meat, poultry, fruits, vegetables, and cereal must be store separately and handled specially by volunteers.  Currently most food banks lack the storage space, separate refrigeration, and volunteers trained to handle Halal food.  When the Somali Youth and Family Club receives donations from the Bellevue Islamic Center, they must distribute the food immediately and straight from the truck.

This limits what the Club can do in terms of service and outreach to the broader Muslim community.  The Club is in a unique position to connect Muslim relief organizations to area food banks to better serve the low-income Islamic community.  With “Why the Fork” funding the Somali Youth and Family Club, in partnership with the Renton Food Bank, will purchase separate utensils and refrigeration for Halal foods.  They’ll work with Food Bank staff to increase education and understanding about the needs of the low-income Muslim community and build relationships between the staff and the 600 families the Club serves.

But, they’re not done!  The Somali Youth and Family Club will also reach out to the community to develop and train volunteers to run summer meals programs at two apartment complexes in Renton, in addition to the apartments the club already serves.  “Why the Fork” will not only increase access to, and utilization of, the emergency food system by low-income Muslim families, it will also educate the system about the needs of a very under-served population, and increase community volunteering!

YOU can help the Somali Youth and Family Center and 11 other local hunger relief organizations with a donation at http://whythefork.org. Through April 14, all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar. That means that your gift will be doubled!

With the addition of refrigeration for Halal foods at the Renton Food Bank the Somali Youth and Family Club will be able to close the gap between income and access to Halal foods for low-income Muslims throughout South Seattle and Renton.

Please click here now to stick a fork in hunger! Give today, and tomorrow more people will eat. Thank you for helping end hunger in our community.

Then and now, Meals on Wheels just makes sense to me. Here in King County, they use volunteers to deliver healthy, nutritious meals to more than 2,000 low-income seniors. This allows them to go on living independently in their own home for as long as they can.

A ‘Why the Fork’ grant from United Way of King County will allow Meals on Wheels to replace the aging freezers they use to stage thousands of meals that are delivered every week. Just one freezer failure can cause the loss of more than $7,000 worth of food, which happened back in 2009.

Please consider a gift to help Meals on Wheels and our other Why the Fork grantees, you can click here to give. Don’t forget, every donation through April 14th will be doubled thanks to a generous matching gift!

A “Why the Fork” grant from United Way of King County will allow Community Lunch to hire a volunteer manager to recruit and organize the volunteers, install a new commercial refrigerator, and begin serving dinner three nights per week. Over the course of a year, this will mean 10,000 more meals for people in the neighborhood.

As someone helped by Community Lunch, Jessica observed “My daughter and I became homeless because of an abusive relationship. Here we can come and get a hot meal, and eat in a safe environment. The volunteers are great, and it’s so much more than just a sandwich and milk!”

Please click here now to make a gift today and your gift will be doubled by our generous matching donors!

Thank you for helping end hunger in our community.

It takes a lot of work to run a food bank; managing deliveries, tracking inventory, stocking the shelves, registering and greeting the clients and much more. Much of the work is difficult and time consuming. However, many of these labor intensive tasks can be streamlined by a simple technology upgrade called ‘Client Card”.

United Way of King County’s “Why the Fork” grant will allow six food banks in South King County region to upgrade their computer hardware and software and begin to use the Client Card system.

Executive Director of the Auburn Food Bank, Debbie Christian told us they doubled their intake of clients when they started using Client Card, cutting client registration down from four minutes to less than one.

In the past year the six food banks who will benefit from the Why the Fork grant have served a total of 6.5 million pounds of food to 48,000 individuals.

YOU can help South King County Food Banks serve even more families with a donation at http://whythefork.orgThrough April 14, all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Our friends at Lifelong AIDS Alliance have ensured that people fighting illness and isolation won’t go hungry for nearly 30 years with the Chicken Soup Brigade.  It’s the only program in the Pacific Northwest that gets nutritional food to our housebound neighbors with life threatening illnesses.  We’re working with them to raise money for a new van!

You can help us go a step further and Dine Out for Life.  On Thursday, April 28, 2011 when you enjoy a dinner at one of the many great participating restaurants a percentage of all proceeds benefit Lifelong AIDS Alliance and the fight against illness and hunger in our community. Breakfast, lunch, dinner or a late night snack – it doesn’t matter.  Join Lifelong AIDS Alliance at any meal on April 28th and do you part to fight illness and hunger at a great local restaurant.

Let’s make sure that we take the lessons from the week, bottle the conversations that we had, and spread the word.  Food banks still need volunteers and donors.  Legislators still need to hear from each of us.  So, what can you do?  Find out at Beyond Hunger Action Week.

Thanks everyone.

The Wrap Up Posts:

“D” and her daughter have been taking part in the Challenge all week.  Today they began recapping their experience. Stop by and welcome them!

Kathleen Flinn gives us her final meals and observations on “feigning foodstamps.”

We haven’t checked in with WithinReach in a few days.  The conversation on their Facebook page has been wonderful and insightful.  Stay there for a while, it’s worth it.  Thanks, ladies!

Melissa Jonas takes the conversation beyond food and onto how food, consumption, and community come together.  On everything from hunger to poverty to civility laws.  As she says, “food is more than fuel.”

Hsiao-Ching Chou tweets about disparity in the form of an iPad cover.  She was also $11 under budget yesterday.

Helen from Vegtastic went “off-road” yesterday and tried to find healthy fast food.  I don’t think she was satisfied with the results.

Tracy Taylor and her final day of the Hunger Challenge.  She is also donating to end hunger!

Andrea Mitchell (Can You Stay for Dinner and Foodista) made tuna burgers for dinner this week. $1.56 per burger.

Back in the Box reminds us that his family ” may be a Hunger Challenge family, but we are certainly not hunger challenged.”

We’ve wrapped up Hunger Action Week, five days dedicated to raising awareness about hunger in our community.

So now what?

It’s time to take action. There are many ways you can get involved, and we’re sure that you can come up some creative ideas too. Here’s what Mary Shaw, one of our staff members at United Way of King County, said she chose to do.

“I thought I could get involved by doing a virtual hunger awareness lunch. OK, I guess I am not the queen of Facebook either. Only a few of my FB friends RSVP’d for my lunch.

It was a lot of fun anyway, with enough folks for a small party and, like most parties, people kept showing up throughout the event! Some of them gave from their own pockets as well. When lunch time came, I sent them all some info about the work they are supporting by participating in my lunch, and let them know how they could ‘leave a tip.’ I felt like I was having a party with my friends even though we were all at our respective desks at work.

I guess not everyone is quite in tune with what ‘virtual events’ are and didn’t know exactly what was expected so they didn’t RSVP. Or maybe they are familiar with my budget and didn’t want to force me to give! (Probably not.) Next time I will try to provide a better explanation of what the event is all about and see if I get a better turnout. It was a great idea and I had fun with it. It raised a few bucks and hopefully more awareness.”

On our Facebook page, Marilyn Dauer talked about how the Hunger Challenge and Hunger Action Week have inspired her to do more.

“For me it created a new way of looking at purchasing food, nutrition, food costs, etc. I have gained a new awareness of food issues in the community. I will be helping with a food drive this weekend to gather food for our local food bank. I am also now volunteering weekly at Annie’s Kitchen which is a free dinner offered to anyone in the community every Wednesday. So, Hunger Action Week has made a good impact on my life.”

Here are 8 ways you can help end hunger in King County:

1. Contact your legislators and let them know that hunger relief programs like State Food Assistance are important to our community. 
2. Invite friends to a “virtual lunch.” Estimate the cost and donate that amount to your favorite hunger-relief organization.
3. Plan a food drive with your school, neighborhood, place of worship or afterschool group.
4. Set up a volunteer project that help ends hunger in our community.
5. Energize your book group around a book that focuses on the issues of hunger such as “Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty” by Mark Winne or “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan.
6. Donate the free items from “buy one, get one free” grocery store campaigns.
7. Grow a vegetable garden with your family and donate extra vegetables to a food bank.
8. Give a gift to United Way of King County to support food banks, meal delivery programs and urban farming projects. Through April 14, every dollar you give will be matched so that means your donation will be doubled!

If each of us commits to speak up, act, volunteer, and support organizations working to reduce hunger in our community, we will succeed.

The Hunger Challenge may have been a difficult experience for you – you went hungry or you had to say “no thanks” at the office pizza party (and you love pizza). It may have been a positive experience – maybe you adopted a few new budget-friendly habits like cutting coupons or skipping the daily coffee shop stop.

Whatever you may have learned during this week (positive and negative), I hope you remember to use this experience to help fight hunger in our community!

It’s easy to forget what it was like to try to stay full with a $7 a day food budget when you resume your daily routine. So here are few tips to keep the fight against hunger top of mind:

1. Volunteer!

• Prepare a nutritious meal for low-income and homeless people at Community Lunch on Capitol Hill. 
• Serve dinner as a volunteer with the Issaquah Meals Program. 
• Repackage bulk food at Food Lifeline in Shoreline or at the Northwest Harvest warehouse in Kent.
• Be a Meals on Wheels driver in Renton and help homebound seniors have healthy food to eat.
• Run a food drive at your office and donate the items to your local food bank. Click here for tips on how to run a successful food drive.

2. Stay in touch with us! Subscribe to one of our newsletters or to our blog feed, friend us on Facebook and follow us Twitter.

That’s not all. Hunger Action Weekers are also donating their time at food banks, signing up to volunteer at Marra Farm, and organizing food drives.

On Saturday the Emergency Feeding Program of South Seattle & King County held a food drive at Sam’s Club in Renton.  Volunteers from Boeing’s Black Employees Association staffed the drive.  Said Brian Anderson, of the Emergency Feeding Program, “It was not only successful, but inspiring and a lot of fun.”  It was a successful event and shoppers were very generous in their donations.  The volunteers had a great time – “The opportunity to give back to the community and interact with community members while networking in between the goal was a fulfilling and satisfying experience.”  Many people had recently giving to relief efforts in Japan, but still donated one or two food items.  As one donor said, “we have our problems here but we must not take the good things for granted, look at what is happening in Japan.  I’ll do anything to help.”  In the end, the volunteers had fun, collected a lot of food, and raised awareness about hunger in our community.  “Being a Boeing employee, giving three hours of my time was gratifying, what a small price to pay for the reward and benefit others who are not as fortunate.”

The team at Windows Admin Volunteer Events is hosting a food drive for thousands of employees at Microsoft.  The food will be donated to our partners at Hopelink.  As Nanci from WAVE said, “Over the last couple months we have been talking about how around the holidays food banks tend to get more donations than other times of the year so we wanted to have a food drive now to encourage giving back and keep the spirit going. I read about the United Way’s Hunger Action Week and thought this would be a great opportunity to raise awareness and collect donations”

Thanks to the teams from Boeing’s Black Employees Association and WAVE many people were able to join Hunger Action Week by donating food to two very important programs.  More importantly, the Emergency Feeding Program of South Seattle & King County and Hopelink have been able to add to the shelves of their food bank.  It’s important to remember, while Hunger Action Week may be coming to a close, we haven’t ended hunger yet.  Food banks will still need volunteers and donations.  Join us!  To find out how you can help visit this page.