by Monica Palmer
Last week, my son’s Cub Scout troop joined forces with other area kids to package noodles at our local food bank. At the end of their shift, these kiddos had packaged two tons of pasta! My husband broke down the math and told our son that the four thousand pounds of food they packaged was equal to the average weight of 80 Cub Scouts. My son stared in disbelief. He couldn’t understand how the small group of small workers managed to achieve such a BIG task.
You’ve probably heard the old adage, “many hands make light work.” Well, it’s true. No one would ever expect one six year-old to package two tons of pasta, but when his two small hands were joined by a network of other small hands, they easily accomplished a difficult task. Plus, they had a lot of fun doing it.
When you see or hear the fact that “49 Million Americans lived in food insecure households last year,” you may feel like solving a problem of that magnitude is impossible. It is certainly a daunting task viewed through the eyes of one person or even one organization.
Fortunately, Missouri has six food banks working to provide food to every single county in our state. These food banks procure and then distribute food to the soup kitchens and pantries where our neighbors in need turn for help.
Furthermore, the food banks that serve Missouri are part of a nationwide network as we are partners with Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger relief charity. Together, we distribute 3 Billion pounds of food in a year.
You may think that your donation of time or money would be insignificant when looking at things through such a grand perspective, but that’s just not true. Each volunteer hour and every dollar donated is incredibly important, because we rely on many hands and many hearts working together to continue the work of feeding hungry people in our country.