This year is the 4th Annual Vermont Foodbank Hunger Conference, titled “Understanding the Persistence of Hunger and Poverty.” There are so many public and private efforts to relieve hunger and poverty both in this country and around the world, yet the problems persist. In fact, it seems that hunger and poverty have always been with us.
We have done a great deal in this country to alleviate hunger. People rarely starve or suffer from severe malnutrition but a large number of people, more than 49 million according to the USDA, are “food insecure,” meaning that they don’t have enough food to live a healthy, active lifestyle. There are programs: SNAP, CSFP, CACFP, SFSP, WIC, school breakfast and lunch, TANF and others that provide benefits to purchase food or directly feed people in need. What is missing?
That is what we will explore on April 27th at the Sheraton in Burlington. The morning session will be for the people who operate food shelves, feeding sites, shelters, child care centers and senior programs—for network partners of the Vermont Foodbank. We will participate in an abbreviated version of the “Bridges out of Poverty” program that provides insight into the challenges of living in poverty and perspective on the choices people in poverty have to make and the reasons certain choices are made.
The public is invited to join us for lunch with keynote speaker Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?. Joel is a provocative speaker, with strong ideas about how this country can actually end hunger and why we haven’t done it yet. The general public is invited to stay and attend afternoon session featuring Mr. Berg and others.
I look forward to the discussions that will come out of the mixing the perspectives of those in poverty with a policy plan to end hunger. Mashing the different perspectives together might get everyone off kilter enough that we come up with some unique and innovative ideas. It will be especially exciting to have the general public in the mix with what I suspect will be some different ideas about hunger and poverty and how to address the problems.
Please join us. For more information or to register visit the Vermont Foodbank website, www.vtfoodbank.org.
The Vermont Foodbank is the largest hunger-relief charity in Vermont and for the last 23 years has been serving food insecure Vermonters through a network of food shelves, meal sites, shelters, senior centers and after-school programs. These are our experiences.
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I'll be a vender at this years beCause craft show and I'll be donating my proceeds to the pittsford food shelf. I was hoping you could post this to your facebook wall. I just wanted everyone here to know about the Because Craft show. Banderas Bay will be there and so will many other great VT. artisans.The beCAUSE Craft Show was created specifically so that our local community could reach out and help many organizations in need at one time, while supporting the business of local vendors. We believe that we can effect change on a global scale with actions we take as individuals. Each local vendor in the craft show is ...a part of a collaborative effort to support social and environmental activism on a larger scale. With this event, we also support local artisans and businesses in a grassroots effort to support our immediate community. The unique thing about beCAUSE is that every purchase made at the show directly supports a charity or non-profit organization. The show has raised over $30,000 collectively in the past 4 years and this year promises to be even more successful, with more vendors attending. March 20th will mark the 5th year the show has run and it just keeps growing. Over 100 Vermont handcrafters will be selling their wares, and all of them have committed to donating 50%-100% of their profits to a charity of their choice. Be active in your community and support local Vermont businesses by attending the beCAUSE craft show on March 20th at the Ross Sports Center at St. Michael’s College from 9:30am-4:30pm. The admission price of the show is $2 and will be donated directly to the Heavenly Pantry Food Shelf in its entirety. Children under 12 attend free. For a full list of the vendors that will be there, please visit the beCAUSE website at www.becausecraftshow.com
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