Anne Goodman is Executive Director of the Cleveland Foodbank, which serves over 100,000 people a year in our region, providing meals for hungry people. This Thu 6/3 they are hosting Hunger Awareness Day at their facility at 1557 East 27th Street. Visit http://www.ClevelandFoodBank.com for more info.

Cool Cleveland: What is the mission of the Foodbank? The food bank takes food from all sectors: retailers, manufacturers, produce growers, the federal, state and local governments, as well as the national manufacturers such as Pillsbury, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble. We’re one of 220 food banks across the country, distributing meals to hungry people in the area.

Are you members of a network or are you independent? We are members of a national network called America’s Second Harvest (http://www.SecondHarvest.org).

What do you do specifically?
We take food from all those sources, repack it, sort it, and put it in inventory. It’s very large, and we distribute 18 million pounds a year. It’s basically a food distribution center. Then we distribute it to 430 programs that are hunger related, and they feed clients.

I understand that the Cleveland Foodbank provides 37,000 meals per day, which is the same as providing a meal each day to all the people living in Bay Village, Brecksville and Pepper Pike. We actually serve 6 counties: Cuyahoga, Ashland, Richland, Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula county. The 18 million pounds we provided served 14 million meals last year. There are over 100,000 people in our territory that use emergency food throughout the year.

That’s a tremendous amount of people who live in our region needing food.
Nationwide, 20% of people experience "food insecurity". That’s a technical term we use that means they skipped a meal involuntarily, or didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, or they went hungry. In our area, 38% of our clients are children, which is a shame.

Because they can’t fend for themselves.
In addition, 40% of the families we serve are working. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and your car breaks down and that costs $350. So people have to make a choice between the car repair and food, or rent and food. A growing group we’re serving is the senior population. As of 2001, we know that 10% of our clients were seniors. But America’s Second Harvest will do a national survey in 2005, and I’m sure that number will go up.

Of all the options: tax policy, federal policy, donations: what makes the biggest difference for the Foodbank?
That's a good question. When you go to our website http://www.ClevelandFoodBank.com and look at the United State's Department of Agriculture’s program for surplus commodities - remember when the government was giving away cheese and butter? Now the commodities have broadened substantially, and food banks are the primary way they are distributed. There is an effort at the federal level to provide food and food stamps. In Ohio, only 58% of people who are eligible are using their food stamps. One problem is the 30-page form you have to fill out; a lot of people don’t know they are eligible. If you get stamps, you have to visit the food stamp office every three months during working hours, which is hard. The forms were tough - even I couldn’t fill them out. The questions range from "What is the value of your car?" to "Have you ever been arrested in New Jersey?". The Federal Government and the State Government need to work together to remove the barriers of food stamp access.

Why isn’t that happening now?
Well, in one word, bureaucracy. I was just in a meeting where the Secretary of Agriculture was speaking, and they fight the demons of bureaucracy. But the Federal Government provides the money, and the State administers the food programs. It would be helpful if the Federal Government put restrictions on the State as to making the program more accessible. There are two ways to go at this. One is from a policy standpoint, which is important, but the other is from the food standpoint. The State Government in Ohio also has a program that provides food for food banks, The Ohio Food Purchase Program, and it’s pretty groundbreaking. It puts out 4 million dollars every biennium [every 2 years]. During the last cycle, it provided 12 million pounds of food.

Ohio is one the largest agricultural producers in the country. Isn't it strange that we have such a problem right here under our noses? It’s all about logistics and the distribution of resources. For example, the Foodbank started distributing produce four years ago; the first year, they distributed 400,000 pounds, and in 2003, we distributed 2.5 million pounds. In relation to your question, when the growers started working with us, our member agencies didn’t have refrigerators to store the produce, so we had to work to get them refrigerators. The biggest challenge is how do you get product from point A to point B to Point C in good shape? We get huge pallets of food, but our mission is feeding hungry people.

With the down economy, has there been any shift in attitude, in terms of people’s willingness to donate, or to make resources available?
If anything, the success of food banks has grown; the more we partner with the food industry and the government, the more resources we have. We’ve begun nationwide reduced-cost purchasing programs - we get food lower than wholesale if we buy it in massive bulk. The Foodbank is also successful because it appeals to both conservatives and liberals. In our case, we have 23,000 financial donors, primarily individuals, and we do get some foundation money for specific programs. But to leverage those dollars, we also have 350 food donors, and we have 5000 volunteers who repack the food.

Who are the food donors?
Businesses like Giant Eagle, Sysco, Smucker's, Heinen's, Tops, Dave's Supermarkets, Northern Haserot, Nestle, and the apple growers at Patterson Food Farm.

How do they participate?
They call us up and say they have surplus product, and we make arrangements to pick it up.

What is considered surplus?
Surplus food is maybe close to code date, maybe 4-5 days from expiration. Nestle just made an enourmous amount of food with meat in it for Canada, but because of mad cow, they can’t ship it to Canada, so for our standards it’s first rate. So the packaging is in French and English, but we win! When September comes, there’s a lot of corn, and when November comes, there’s a lot of apples. At the end of the season there’s a lot of surplus. They make as much as their market can bear, then they make the rest available to us.

It's ironic and sad, considering the current focus on obesity in America with the film Super Size Me, and McDonald's new light meals with salads. How do hunger and obesity relate to each other? Good question. We get a lot of questions about child obesity and what it’s attributed to. You can go to McDonald's and get their "dollar meal" and get a hamburger, fries and a drink for $3. But if you buy chicken, asparagus and potatoes, that will cost you more than $3. The availablilty of cheap junk food is a key reason for obesity. As a working mom, you get off work, and you have to walk to the grocery store in the inner city. The big retailers don’t want to go into the inner city, so there are these smaller food markets where food is more expensive, and fresh food is much more scarce, so the availability of healthy food is actually more scarce in highly populated urban areas. Obesity and hunger can go hand in hand. We consider this at the Foodbank, that poor nutrition is related to food insecurity, because you go for what is most easily available. But surviving off Oodles of Noodles won’t take you very far. 35% of the households we serve contain people living in poor health. This problem of obesity leads to a huge population with diabetes, so we need to work on having nutritious foods to help those diabetics and those with heart disease.

You’ve got a big event coming up: Hunger Awareness Day on Thursday 7/3.
Yes, this is the third annual Hunger Awareness Day, designed to make people aware of this issue, while demonstrating that we are doing something about it and our ability to accomplish even more. But it requires the attention of the community, the industry and the government - all legs of the stool have to be there. I’ve done this for 10 years, and my experience is when people know about the problem, they get things done.

How political is this problem?
It’s completely bi-partisan, but we’re trying to make it a bigger political issue. One thing the Cleveland Foodbank does is work closely with State legislators and Cuyahoga County commissioners. We have tremendously conservative State legislators who have been enormously supportive of what we’ve done - it’s true blue, because they enabled the Ohio Food Purchase Program. The State made a gift to us for our new facility, and the County government has supported us for 25 years, and has given us money for our new facility.

So how do you politicize it?
By making it something that people talk about, so they can make changes in Federal programs that will make a difference. Once you explain to people who we are feeding, it’s easy to eradicate the feeling that these people just need to help themselves. It’s children, sick people and the aged.

So what happens this Thursday June 3rd for your Hunger Awareness Day?
We’re having an event for our member agencies, our donors and the media at the Foodbank, located at 1557 East 27th Street from 10AM-11AM. We’re going to be unveiling a large picture of the Terminal Tower with plates that symbolize 200 meals each, and the stack of plates represents 37,000 meals, which is the amount of food we distribute everyday.

What can the average person do?
Go to our site, http://www.ClevelandFoodbank.com, where you can sign up to volunteer or to make a financial contribution.

Any political action you can recommend for Cool Cleveland readers: letters, phone calls, emails to politicians?
As usual, we’ll have a concerted effort in the Fall for the State budget. It’s always a good idea to contact community and political leaders on the importance of fighting hunger.

If everyone did just a little bit...
That’s a good point, because the problem is huge. The primary way we alleviate the problem is very effective. The availability of food to us indicates this is a tremendously generous community. I witness it everday. I’m confident that when we tell people about it, they will do something. Maybe they'll see it in Cool Cleveland, or hear about in on WCPN, or get a mailer. And the awareness builds up from there. You are making a difference.

Interview and photos by Thomas Mulready

The Cleveland Food Bank is hosting Hunger Awareness Day this Thu 6/3 at 1557 East 27th Street from 10AM-11AM, 696-6007 http://www.ClevelandFoodBank.com (:divend:)