Food Insecurity and the CCEFP

Linda Burton posting from Arkadelphia, Arkansas – A round-about skew of circumstances brought me back to grant writing a few months ago. Yes, the writing of grant proposals in order to raise money for a cause. In this particular case, a very good cause, right here in Clark County, Arkansas. How much do you know about HUNGER in America? The politically correct term is “food insecurity” which is defined as being uncertain where your next meal is coming from. Riding across the vast wheat fields of Montana and corn fields of Nebraska, it seems like a fairy tale gone bad to think enough food isn’t getting to enough people. How could that be?

Consider the seafood along our coasts and rivers – Gulf shrimp, northwest salmon, northeast cod, and those famous Mississippi catfish. Consider the beef cattle in Texas, the pork raised in Iowa. Consider the milk and cheeses of Wisconsin, the potatoes of Idaho, the Florida oranges, the California grapes. Consider that Arkansas is the top rice-growing state in the country, producing nearly 9 billion pounds annually. Yet Arkansas ranks as the 2nd most food insecure state in the nation, with 19.9% of its people not having enough to eat. That is 1 out of every 5! In Arkadelphia’s Clark County, where that rate is even higher, a group of people, chins set and purposeful, decided to step up and do something about it. An idea is where everything begins, and that idea stretched out over the how’s and who’s until finally, incorporated with by-laws and a few donations in hand, the Clark County Ecumenical Food Pantry (CCEFP) was born. Exactly who are they, and what have they done since their beginnings in August 2014?

During its first year of operation, 456 families representing 1,022 Clark County food-insecure residents enrolled in the CCEFP program. Working with a first-year budget of $7,000, approximately 43,500 pounds of food with an estimated retail value of $101,400 were distributed to those families. How in blazes was that possible? » read more