Skip to main content

Take Action

 


Sleeping through my alarm two days in a row isn’t an accident. It’s a trend. Something about the morning light must be changing as the season begins to lean towards Fall. Sigh. I must adjust.

I saw this on my morning exploration of Twitter and thought, “Huh! I didn’t know that.”

GET READY! Tomorrow is #HungerActionDay! We have an amazing donor, the Ellicott City – Columbia Lions Club, matching DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR for ONE DAY ONLY in support of the #HoCoFoodBank. bit.ly/3Dp4w2Q


This was a tweet from yesterday. So, “tomorrow” is today, if you would like to have your donation matched by the Ellicott City-Columbia Lions Club.

I did not know that September was Hunger Action Month. It looks like Hunger Action Month was established in 2008 by a group called Feeding America.  

Hunger Action Month was established by Feeding America back in 2008, when it decided it was time for a nationwide push to get involved with the hunger crisis across the country. 

In Columbia/HoCo the CAC and the Howard County Food Bank are well known. Other, smaller groups have also worked to combat hunger in our community. Food for Tomorrow comes to mind, the group that has collected food donations during area Fourth of July parades. Since the onset of the pandemic other initiatives have arisen to meet the growing need to feed our neighbors: Columbia Community Care, food distribution by ION HoCo, and other groups I don’t even know about. 

Individual churches collect food for donation, civic groups, too. Schools now have food pantries. Outside the Unitarian Universalist Church in Columbia there is a Little Free Food Pantry. 

Hunger in Columbia/HoCo did not begin with the pandemic but it has been both broadened and deepened due to illness, job loss, business failures and cutbacks.

If you can help in some way, I hope you will. One does not have to be a large corporation or a millionaire to make a difference. It is always a benefit to be a friend who tells a friend, so that the gifts may be multiplied.

I’m happy to link you up the the  CAC donation page but I also want to put in a plug for Columbia Community Care. I continue to be amazed by this completely grassroots organization and the difference they have made during the pandemic.

One last thing. If you, like me, are contemplating the ever-growing challenge of hunger in our community and in our nation, you might want to listen to this TED talk by Jasmine Crowe:

What We’re Getting Wrong in the Fight to End Hunger

Tell me what you think.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...