Chester County Food Bank Fund

At a luncheon today with a few fellow board members of the Chester County Women's Commission I learned some shocking facts about hunger in Chester County. The flier that I was reading started with the following statement: "In Chester County, we hide our poverty all too well". I can attest to this fact. I never go out to dinner around here that there isn't a long wait. Everyone is talking into expensive looking cell phones, everyone is well dressed. Go to a happy hour in West Chester, and the bars are 3 deep to get a glass of wine. But there is a hidden group of people in the county that do not have enough money for food. While my children feel badly that I haven't had a sale in a while and they can't have the latest video game, there are children going hungry. This saddens me.

Here are some more facts about hunger in Chester County:

* Nearly 1 in 10 of our neighbors skip meals due to lack of money to buy food.
* 122,000 households in Southeastern PA must reduce the size of meals or skips meals because they cannot afford to purchase sufficient food.
* Those 122,000 households include nearly 61,000 children.

Now I don't know about you, but I think that one hungry child is one child too many.

Here are some facts about the Chester County Food Bank:

* They serves 33 food pantries and congregate feeding sites.
* Nearly 700,000 pounds of state/federal funded food were delivered to these sites during the fiscal year 2007/2008.
* Donations are also made in large quantities to these sites from individuals, community groups, Wegmans, Vanguard, Acme, QVC and other corporations.
* The last half of 2008 saw a 37% increase in food requests at the 3 largest food pantries in the county (when compared to the last half of 2007).
* 66,500 pounds of food were gleaned by volunteers in fiscal year 2007/2008.
* A total of 39 farms in the county participate in the Gleaning Program. (To learn about the Gleaning Program and the local farmers and companies that support it go to Chester County Cares, Gleaning and Food Recovery Program.
* A total of 543 volunteers assist in picking from the fields for the Gleaning Program.

There are ways to help.


You can donate money.

You can donate food.

You can frequent establishments and stores that do help.

Most importantly, you can volunteer your time.



Hunger and joblessness can happen to anyone. We need to help.



Please visit Chester County Food Bank Fund to see how your time and talents can be put to use. www.chescocf.org