Growing Good

A Beginner's Guide to Cultivating Caring Communities

William Hemminger, William Hemminger

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780253057655
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Anger and hopelessness can overwhelm communities. So what can everyday people do to actually grow some good in their own hometown?

Growing Good: A Beginner's Guide to Cultivating Caring Communities shows how ordinary people have transformed themselves into volunteers and activists. Centered mostly in the Midwest, this collection of essays brings together the stories of normal people who have rolled up their sleeves to make their community a better place by serving nonprofits such as Gleaner Food Bank in Indianapolis, Indiana; Migration and Refugee Services in Louisville, Kentucky; and Patchwork Central in Evansville, Indiana, along with national organizations like CASA. For instance, a teacher and his student started a native plant garden to help local insects thrive in a disused corner of their school property. A woman saw a billboard and was moved to become a voice for children in need. A professional photographer offered his services to people experiencing homelessness in order to help others witness their humanity. Editor Bill Hemminger also writes of his own extensive experience with community gardening to feed hungry neighbors.

Filled with simple actions, clear steps, and useful lists, including how to care for and nurture your own inner peace and creativity, Growing Good will help readers of all ages plant seeds of hope and cultivate communities where everyone thrives.

1

WHY BOTH FEED THE LINE AND REDUCE THE LINE?

John Elliott

AS WE REFLECT WITH APPROPRIATE pride and a sense of accomplishment on the economic success of our Hoosier State, I find myself questioning how those same indicators might also lead to a sense of shame and discouragement if viewed from a different perspective—that of our neighbors struggling with poverty, including the 1 million out of 6.63 million, or 15 percent, of Hoosiers who are food insecure every day. The state of Indiana leads the nation in manufacturing per capita, it was named the most effectively run state government in the nation, and our unemployment rate is the envy of our Midwest neighbors. We debate whether to spend our significant fiscal surplus while our bankrupt neighbor Illinois pays less than 60 percent of its bills. When achieving success, however, it is worth pausing to reflect on who has been left out of that success. I awake each day pondering a series of questions that begin with why. In this essay, I’ll share some of those why questions with you, hopeful that you will react by joining me in striving toward realistic but daunting and sustainable solutions.

CONFRONTING FOOD INSECURITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Gleaners Food Bank is one of more than two hundred Feeding America food banks in the United States. These agencies collect, store, and distribute food to more than sixty thousand food pantries throughout the nation, providing enough food for 4.3 billion meals each year. In 2019 alone, more than thirty-seven million people struggled with hunger; that number includes many children and elderly citizens. Visit the Feeding America website—feedingamerica.org—to find out more about food insecurity in the United States, the history of Feeding America, and how you might help.

I came to my Gleaners Food Bank leadership role from the board of directors, following more than a decade in a federal government economic and trade policy-making role and residency in other countries, a brief stint in higher education, and nearly twenty years at major corporations. In my public affairs role for the Kroger Company (deservedly labeled by Forbes and the Chronicle of Philanthropy as the most generous company in America at the time), I oversaw all aspects of community engagement for a multistate operating division. That included more than $11 million annually in support of dozens of hunger-relief organizations, primarily in Indiana and Illinois, clearly the top priority within that division’s $15 million annual budget and consistent with Kroger’s national community engagement activities.

Combining decades of career and volunteer experience, I’ve seen both strategic big-picture and neighborhood-centric grassroots realities around the world. Although I came to Gleaners with a business-oriented, data-centric, and policy-level bias toward how I make decisions, as well as a lifetime of fiscally conservative politics, I care very deeply about my hungry neighbors. I am perhaps a demonstration that solutions to social challenges like hunger and poverty can be compassionate, faith based, and yet fiscally sound. If we set aside outdated political and economic assumptions, accept shared responsibility, and focus on people-centric aspirational outcomes, we can identify viable, sustainable solutions. Why can’t the best hunger-relief solutions also be the most economically viable and fairest to the people we strive to help over time? They can—when we all come together to construct and refine the best solutions.

As a unified, singularly focused community, we must share a sense of urgency regarding the convergence of hunger and health but also accept the complexity of additional interconnected issues related to hunger. It is hard work and even overwhelming to be poor, especially when the community’s attention and resources seem to leap from one politicized priority to the next in isolation. It falls to us, then, not to jump from issue to issue but to remain singularly focused on simultaneous, shared multifactor solutions—accompanied by a disciplined process of sequencing and prioritization.

Hunger is connected to educational success, mental health, chronic health issues, the level of adult productivity on the job, and workplace cultures and norms that need to change. Hunger impacts the overall public good of our community and our shared quality of life. If we focus on health indicators as one example, 34 percent of our food-insecure neighbors have diabetes (versus the national average of 9.4 percent), 58 percent have heart disease, 79 percent purchase the cheapest food items regardless of their awareness of associated health concerns, and the food insecure have 44 percent higher health care costs than the national average.¹ Food insecurity is more predictive than income for the ten most prevalent chronic diseases, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, hepatitis, stroke, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and kidney disease. Hunger brings a higher risk of childhood anemia and hospitalization.² There is no better investment you can make than in the health and nutrition of children. I believe there is a connection between Indiana’s forty-secondof-fifty-states ranking for quality of public health and the inadequate resources we devote to hunger relief—although certainly there are many other determinants of a state’s success or failure.³ Food insecurity limits children’s performance in school in the short term, but more importantly, it limits their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth—with implications over a lifetime of societal cost to others and missed opportunities for the children. This is not the right way to invest in our future generations.

The most effective cure for hunger is a paycheck that supports the entire family for the entire month. So why don’t we directly connect and incentivize workforce opportunities and hunger-relief efforts for those with the capacity to work? Can we admit that unemployment rates mask the impact of underemployment on households and the viability of their monthly incomes? Hunger and chronic disease can result in disability, leading to reduced labor force participation, so why don’t we make the right short-term investments for long-term economic gain? Why does the state budget in Ohio provide its statewide food bank association more than $20 million per year in resources while Indiana provides $300,000? Is that demonstrative of prioritization? Are Hoosiers pleased to rank thirty-first in the United States for food insecurity?⁴ Is that really the best Hoosiers strive to offer each other?

Before pondering further questions, I’d like to share a bit of background information on those we serve: nearly half are children or senior citizens; one in five is a veteran or active-duty military; 64 percent of households report at least one unemployed adult—not 100 percent, as a common stereotype indicates; 70 percent are living at or under the poverty level; 53 percent are in deep poverty with an annual income less than $10,000; 29 percent of households include grandparents raising their grandchildren; 81 percent choose between food and transportation; 78 percent choose between paying for food and medical care; 77 percent choose between paying for food and utilities; and 65 percent choose between paying for food and housing.⁵ If we recognize the compelling convergence of hunger and health challenges for families in need, why do we accept stunningly poor levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease overall in Indiana—and a dramatically higher incidence for those in poverty?

Ultimately, I hope that the two hundred regional food banks and more than sixty thousand local agencies that comprise the Feeding America national network will go from the largest charity in the United States to irrelevance. I want my job to be no longer necessary. That would be a just social and economic outcome. But it is not happening—and it won’t until we change both the dialogue and the way we build, pursue, and evaluate the success of solutions. As we create communities of practice, mobilize outside expertise and technology, and set aside parochial tendencies to genuinely pool resources and define multiyear scaling of solutions, there is a role for every one of you to play and every talent you bring.

Why is one in seven Hoosiers food insecure? At Gleaners, our mission now focuses not only on feeding the line of those who are hungry but also on reducing the line through unprecedented collaboration and communication with other community organizations. We are very mindful of the complexity of interconnected issues related to hunger. Hunger is a long-term challenge that will never be eliminated, but it can be effectively addressed. Gleaners distributed twenty-eight million meals in 2018 and will see a significant increase in our volume in 2019—but there still is a meal gap in every county. A 15 percent increase in meals distributed from 2017 to 2018 means we met 39 percent of the meal gap—and we did not meet 61 percent. Across Indiana, our neighbors miss 170 million meals a year—six million meals in Marion County alone.⁶

In May 2017, Gleaners became one of Feeding America’s eight regional produce processing centers, operating a cooperative that will support thirty-nine regional food banks in seven Midwest states. Most important to me, we will have access to dozens of healthy, nutritious produce items direct from the farm—replacing a history of anxiously waiting for old onions and old potatoes to arrive at our back door. Why don’t the hungry neighbors we are privileged to serve deserve the same quality and variety of food my family and I have access to? Why shouldn’t the amazing farm families and agribusinesses of Indiana feed their hungry neighbors as well as they feed rural Chinese and Central African villagers? Indiana has an impressive long-term record of food exports and our retail food network effectively leverages our geographic location and position as a leading US transportation hub, so why shouldn’t food-insecure Hoosiers enjoy raspberries from California, tangerines from Florida, apples from Washington, and melons from Indiana? In 2016, Indiana exported $4.6 billion in agricultural products. The market value of Indiana’s top nine agricultural products totaled $6.48 billion in 2017.⁷ Surely we could be as proud of feeding hungry neighbors with Indiana pork, duck, and soybeans as we are of our exporting prowess. In 2016, Gleaners did not receive a single pound of fresh produce directly from a farm. In 2018, we received and distributed more than ten million pounds. We need to increase that to at least fifty million pounds. Please tell your federal and state elected officials, as well as Hoosier farmers and agribusiness decision-makers, that they must join with food banks to convert US food waste into food for hungry Hoosiers. Tell them with appropriate urgency.

Why is the world’s only remaining military superpower, and the leading economy in the world, incapable of feeding all its people a healthy, nutritious variety of food? We should be far more concerned than we are with wasting up to 40 percent of this nation’s food production while our neighbors go hungry. We can feed every American. We simply choose not to. Farmers plow crops under for short-term economic or food retail quality considerations rather than appropriate societal considerations. Feeding America, including Gleaners and 199 peer food banks, distributed 4.2 billion pounds of food to the hungry in 2017, and yet forty-one million Americans still do not have sufficient food to sustain themselves. Are we truly a superpower if more than 12 percent of US households are food insecure?⁸

A choice between national security and food security is not necessary in leveraging dollars taken from taxpayers. The US can afford both, but you need to raise your voice in advocacy —making that realistic expectation clear to elected officials at the federal and state levels. At the same time, Gleaners and every other hunger-relief charity needs your resources. Ideally, we need cash to buy the most needed, most nutritious food from food companies who sell to us at very deep discounts. We no longer seek loose food donations that come with high supply chain costs, no ability for nutrition and menu planning to benefit clients, and no transparency in the event of food safety recalls. Please consider going to www.gleaners.org/donate to support my very hardworking team of staff and volunteers, https://feedingindianashungry.org/ for partner food banks elsewhere in Indiana, or https://www.feedingamerica.org/ways-to-give to find a food bank in need outside Indiana. We all desperately need your time, talent, and resources.

Why do myriad poverty-related charities compete for community resources and the attention of our elected leadership instead of collaborating on shared solutions? A very distracting reality hovering over us every day is the 82 percent of all hunger-relief meals in Indiana provided by four federal programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP— previously known as food stamps), at 58 percent; Women, Infants & Children (WIC), at 3 percent; the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), at 2 percent; and school lunch programs, at 19 percent.⁹ By comparison, despite being the largest hunger-relief c...