‘One Big Table’
The students milled around on the loading dock, dwarfed by slates of grape jelly, stacks of white bread and barrels brimming with jars of peanut butter.
“Are you the mayor?” a curious third-grader asked bystanders.
Alas, there was no mayor. But Spokane City Councilman Brad Stark read Mayor Jim West’s proclamation, as the students shuffled their feet and tugged on their Second Harvest T-shirts.
“Whereas, it is with deep concern . . .,” Stark intoned, before declaring Thursday as Hunger Awareness Day in Spokane.
Jason Clark, executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of the Inland Northwest, announced the region’s largest donors – predominantly grocery stores and name-brand food companies – and called for more donations. His collection center serves 21 food banks in Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Montana.
“We’re proud to be here today and every day of the year,” said a representative from Wilcox Family Farms, which donated thousands of pounds of food to the collection center.
While Clark was genial and upbeat, the statistics are grim: The food bank network serves 16,000 people each month; nearly half are children. Demand increased 25 percent in the past two years. Year after year, Washington has one of the country’s highest hunger rates.
“It is a growing issue in this country,” said Clark, whose group will ship 14 million pounds of food this year.
The food banks typically receive a slew of donations around Thanksgiving and Christmas. But summer can be a difficult time, Clark said, as donations slow and students, many of whom had received free lunches at their schools, head home for the summer.
Thursday’s program was part of a national Hunger Awareness Day. The theme was “One Big Table,” which Clark said represents the need for communities to help feed its poorest families. Nearly every single Spokane client served by the food bank earned less than half of the county’s median income.
After the presentation, students from Pratt Elementary stood neatly in line and prepared to sing. Their teacher frantically pressed buttons on the CD player. When it refused to play, the students soldiered on a cappella.
“The world is a rainbow,” they sang, as their teacher mouthed the words, “and when we work together it’s such a sight to see.”
For a moment, the loading dock was transformed by their voices. Men in orange safety hats stopped to watch from a window in the warehouse. A pair of starlings fluttered back and forth to a nest above the lectern. The students swayed gently as they sang, smiling into the television cameras.
The assembled supporters broke into applause, and Clark urged people to stick around for some ice cream.
For more information about National Hunger Awareness Day and child hunger, visit www.hungerday.org or contact Second Harvest at (509) 534-6678.