Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410190055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Once a day, year-round, Roanoke Area Ministries invites the homeless, the welfare recipients, the working poor - the hungry - in for a midday meal.
At least four times a week, meals include some type of meat. Often, there is not enough to satisfy diners' wants, Julie Hollingsworth, RAM director, said Tuesday at a hunger forum sponsored by the Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest FoodBank.
"Sometimes, we almost need a bodyguard," she said. "People are busy taking chicken off each other's plates and putting it in their pockets.
"These folks who we work with day in and day out don't have shelves stocked with food. While our question is `What am I going to eat?' their question is `Will I eat?'''
Representatives from social service agencies, community service groups, food banks, meal programs and corporations gathered Tuesday at the Roanoke Civic Center exhibition hall to discuss hunger in Southwest Virginia and ways to address the problem together.
Among the points raised at "Hunger Forum: A Call to Action":
That hunger affects one in eight families in Virginia.
That the hungriest are the people who are least able to fend for themselves - the very young and the very old.
That the U.S. Department of Agriculture has cut Temporary Emergency Assistance Food Program funding from a one-time $160million to $80million for the last fiscal year and to $25million for fiscal year 1994-95.
That Virginia returned unused money to the federal government that had been allocated to the state for WIC, a special food program for women, infants and children.
The latter point surprised many of the forum participants, including state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, who was guest speaker.
"I was not aware that money had been returned to the federal government," he said. "That should be a concern to all of us. That very issue needs to be addressed."
For fiscal 1992-93, the state returned $1.8million. How much the state returned for 1993-94 is not yet known. Returning unused program funds is a federal requirement.
Judy Garrett, the Alleghany Health District's public health nutritionist and coordinator of its WIC program, said that only 60 percent of the people eligible for WIC in the district are enrolled in the program. The federal government has pushed the state to increase its caseload, she said.
However, to reach the other 40 percent, the district would need to double its four-person WIC staff, Garrett said. And of total program funds, only 20 percent can be used for administrative purposes, including hiring more staff members and increasing program promotion, Garrett said. The rest must be used for food.
"It's a Catch-22," she said. The federal government "says we lose money if we don't increase our caseload. But we don't have the staff to increase the caseload."
Representatives of food programs spoke of the need for public-private partnerships.
Effective partnerships must be formed among the federal government, churches, state government, the business community, local businesses, the agriculture industry and other private sector interests to ensure efficient spending, said Kenneth Horn, co-director of the Society of St.Andrews, a food salvage program in Big Island.
"There is no excuse for anyone to go hungry in this country," he said.
Christine Vladimiroff, chief executive officer of Second Harvest, the nation's largest charitable food program, said the organization had established a good relationship with the food industry, taking millions of pounds of improperly labeled and damaged goods.
But with on-time inventory and better packaging, "those of us who were dependent on what came from the old way of doing things are asking, `Where are we going to get food?''' she said.
"We need greater action so the food will be there."
by CNB