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Healthy Aging By Sharon Johnson She uses her birthday to feed the hungry Donna Epstein was reluctant to turn 60 years of age. In the later months of her 59th year, she decided to use the inevitability of the event for good purpose. Donna has an entrepreneur's head and a social worker's heart. So she designed her own fund-raiser. In acknowledgment of her 60 years, she walked 60 country miles. It took her 19 hours, and she raised $4,000 in the process. Enough money to keep the food pantry Donna and her husband, Matt, operate open for another two years. Food insecurity. It's a bureaucratic term for hunger, interwoven with poverty, unemployment and economic distress. The government defines it as "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food." In the Applegate, it means if you have no money to buy food, you probably know about Donna's food pantry in Ruch. Like most food pantries across this state, this one is nondescript. It is a small loading platform in the back of the Ruch School, open on Mondays for two hours. On the platform are a card table and two folding chairs. Inside and around the corner, there are four shelves. The shelves hold beans, rice, peanut butter, raisins and canned goods - the kinds of things that I put in those big round "feed-the-hungry" donation barrels during the holidays. The barrels that often do not seem very full. Food insecurity exists in Oregon. Big time. We lead the nation in the number of people who are "food insecure." It's almost 8 percent of our population. Ironic, isn't it, that we have fields full of ripening produce and so many hungry people. Ironic, isn't it, that in the beautiful and prospering Applegate Valley, there are hungry and homeless people. Donna and Matt use money they have raised locally, together with donations from Applegate Valley residents and businesses, to buy food from ACCESS (the coordinator of food pantries). When they purchase food from ACCESS, they pay 14 to 35 cents per pound. And Donna and Matt don't just buy, transport, store and hand out food staples; they provide simple interventions and words of practical support. "Let's get you some boxes of fortified cereal for those kids of yours," and "Have you got refrigeration - a place to heat this soup? No? OK, let's find you something you can eat from the can. Got a can opener?" Food insecurity is dramatically illustrated in an annual publication from the Oregon Food Bank Network. It graphs the increasing need, up 31 percent since 1994. The literature from the Food Bank Network is compelling, as is the mission: "No one should be hungry." The available data says we have more hungry people than any other state in the nation. This is not right. No one should be hungry. No one should be "food insecure." There is enough insecurity in the country right now. And this is a kind of insecurity that I, personally, can do something about. So can you. For information about donating to the Ruch food pantry, call 899-8644 or ACCESS at 779-6691. Sharon Johnson is an assistant professor in family and community development at OSU Extension and a member of the Senior Advisory Council. Reach her at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.