CityStream returns from Food Lifeline, an organization working to end hunger
by focusing on its root cause of poverty
brought on by systemic racism and social injustice.
Food Lifeline's reach extends
from this facility in Seattle to all of Western Washington.
Now, one group that benefits greatly is seasonal workers.
In Skagit County.
Food Lifeline is partnering
with local food banks to meet the needs of the Hispanic community
by investing resources to purchase more culturally appropriate foods.
At the Tri Parish Food Bank,
these funds support new farm creation.
Farms that employ local workers
to grow culturally appropriate foods
that the Hispanic community needs.
Having familiar foods makes a huge difference.
Food Lifeline is committed
to expanding its capacity and network
to meet the increased need
to celebrating the dignity and diversity of all clients,
to partnering with communities determined to find their own solutions
and engaging people just like you
who believe food should be a basic human right.
♪♪
Joining us now
is Mark Coleman, Food Lifeline.
Mark, thanks for joining us, appreciate it.
My pleasure Enrique,
thank you for visiting us.
We just saw a video in which we,
one group that really depends on Food Lifeline
are Latino seasonal workers.
If there wasn't your organization, what would happen to them?
You know, that's hard to say.
And what would happen is
what has been happening for a long time.
There's been a struggle in that community.
And we really want to work with those communities
to find out what the answer is and help them achieve that.
How difficult is it for you to serve them knowing that their needs
might be a bit different?
Well I think Enrique, the key is listening
to these organizations because they know what the answers are.
And once you can listen to them
and then find a way to help them respond to that, you can create solutions.
Tell me about where the bulk of your food comes from.
Who's supplying?
Well, every company in the food industry creates surplus.
You can't sell what you don't have.
So what we do is we pick up those surpluses
from farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores and restaurants,
and that allows us to serve 350 food banks, shelters and meal programs
across Western Washington.
That's a lot of people
that depend on you.
We'll serve over a million people this year.
You see the volunteers behind me there sorting and repacking food
that's going to go out in the next 24 hours.
Every day, Food Lifeline creates the equivalent of 282,000 meals.
Wow.
How has COVID and the pandemic impacted
what Food Lifeline does and what they provide?
When COVID hit, we had problems finding food.
You know, the supply chain issues.
And we also had twice as many people looking for help.
We did public distributions where the majority of the people
coming to pick up food
had never visited a food bank before in their lives.
So that was a huge challenge.
One of the things that Food Lifeline has done
is to take a deeper dive in looking at poverty
and its impact on hunger.
What did you find?
What we discovered
is that if you're hungry, it's a financial problem.
So most of the hunger comes from the root cause of poverty.
And poverty comes from systemic racism, inequality, inequity.
So we're looking to approach those root causes and try to remove them
or modify them to make sure that more people have the food they need.
What do you tell the public about what your needs are?
What we tell the public is we need them to join us on this.
We need them to learn about the problems,
learn what the solutions are,
and then engage with us to make a difference.
One last thing.
You have volunteers that help you.
How important is that to the existence of this organization?
We couldn't do without the volunteers.
We have about 18,000 volunteers every year because as you can see
in the warehouse, we get food by the truckloads and by the pallets.
You can't drop a pallet on a small food bank.
We need to break that food down, warehouse it,
and then put those orders together for the food bank.
So without the volunteers, we couldn't do this.
So if you want to volunteer, how do you go about doing it?
Couldn't be easier. Go to FoodLifeline.org.
When you get to the homepage, there's a big button that says Volunteer.
You click on it. It'll bring up a calendar.
All the dates and times you can sign up online
and then just show up here and give us a hand.
Thanks a lot, Mark, and good luck.
Pleasure, thank you for being here.