Document text
- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us November 28, 2005 Food drive looks to offset federal drop By Bill Kettler For the Tidings The brown grocery bag inside your newspaper today is your invitation to help feed Jackson County’s hungriest families during the holidays. ACCESS Inc. hopes to collect at least 25,000 pounds of food and $25,000 in cash donations during the agency’s 22nd annual food drive, said Philip Yates, the nonprofit organization’s nutrition department manager. Yates encourages readers of the Mail Tribune and Daily Tidings to fill the grocery bags with nonperishable food items and leave them at any Jackson County fire station or one of the other locations printed on the bag. Protein-rich foods are best — such as peanut butter, canned fish, meat and beans — but nonperishable staples such as rice, pasta and hot or cold cereals are also welcomed. Cash donations are especially helpful because they can be used to help ACCESS gather and distribute food. “For each dollar, we can provide six pounds of food,” he said. If that sounds like an impossible bargain, it’s because of the way ACCESS works, Yates said. “We don’t buy it. We salvage food that would be wasted because it’s gone past the pull date.” He noted that the month-long “Food for Hope” drive begins at a time when the need for food is greater than ever because the amount of commodity food provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has fallen about 25 percent this year. Yates said he does not know why the volume of commodity food had declined, but he speculated that some foodstuffs that would have come to Southern Oregon may have been diverted to relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Yates said commodity foods such as beans, rice, pasta and canned vegetables represent 25 to 30 percent of the food in the emergency boxes that ACCESS prepares for needy families. “We supplement (the commodities) with all the other food we bring in,” he said. Yates said about 26,000 Jackson County residents (about one in every seven) currently receive monthly food stamps, but “food stamps only carry a family through about three weeks in four. There’s always a surge at our food banks in the last week of the month.” While Oregon’s hunger problem is no longer the worst in the nation, it’s still a big challenge in Jackson County, in part because of the high cost of living. Recent studies suggest that about half of the region’s renters spend 50 percent of their income to put a roof over their heads — far more than the recommended 30 percent. He said an additional 1,000 people have sought emergency food boxes already this year, bringing the total to 26,370 since July. Last year, ACCESS distributed 2.2 million pounds of food (a 25 percent increase over the previous year) through Jackson County’s 20 local food pantries. “This community is amazing in responding to the need,” Yates said. “It’s often just a question of getting people to understand what the need is.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams