Project MANA - A Hunger Relief Agency

North Lake Tahoe Bonanza: Tuesday was Hunger Awareness Day. Now in its sixth year, this day serves as a platform for domestic hunger-relief organizations to raise awareness about hunger in America. The theme this year is "The Face of Hunger Will Surprise You."

The late great reggae legend Bob Marley once sang, "A hungry man is an angry man." He's also the cause of much social unrest in the world. Here in our little corner of Lake Tahoe we don't see starvation like the images out of Africa and other parts of the world portrayed on CNN. But we do have people who are hungry and do not know where their next meal is coming from. In fact there is a very good chance you know someone like this. They seem like regular people. They are not homeless. They work at a regular job, usually something to do with the service industry that supports our tourist economy. Take the school kid who used to come by to visit with my sons when we lived in Incline Village. His single mom worked to make ends meet, but I noticed that whenever the boy came to visit, he was always hungry. Suspecting that they had no food at home, I casually asked him what kind of food he liked and then just as casually I left him a bag of groceries to take home every week. He never said anything, not Thanks or No thanks, but the food was always gone. My family and I have since moved to Carson City, to what feels and looks like a middle class neighborhood. In the first week I introduced myself to the families on either side of us. Both are single mom households and both are financially challenged. My neighbors did not come out and say, "I'm hungry" but in "over the fence" conversations it does not take long to understand that they are struggling. They will not be able to afford a turkey for Thanksgiving, and they do not know how they are going to get their car, or roof fixed.

Then there are the phone calls to Project MANA from teachers every year reporting that they have a student who is not getting enough to eat. Or we hear about the older woman on a fixed income who is too stubborn to downsize and spends all her income on house taxes leaving her with nothing left over to buy groceries. This last category includes my own mother who, if not for her children, would not be able to survive on her fixed income.

Just the fact that the last two places I have lived had faces of the hungry, and the calls from teachers and community members who learn that their student or neighbor has been going hungry, leads me to believe that there are many more cases we don't know about. Many of these folks don't know you can get help with food. Many are too proud to ask. Food is a very basic need and it is a humbling experience to have to ask for it. It is such a basic need that without it, it is impossible to be a productive citizen of our community. When you're hungry the only thing you're thinking about is getting food on the table for your family. You're struggling, you're in survival and nothing else matters.

I think to some degree we have been desensitized by all the pictures of starvation we see from other parts of the world. Here, people look healthy on the surface and there are no swollen bellies, or sunken eyes. Then of course there is the fact that we are surrounded by an abundance of food. Go into any supermarket and ask yourself, "How can anyone be hungry with all this food available?"

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are 35 million Americans suffering from hunger or food insecurity (they do not know where their next meal is coming from). In the Incline Village and Kings Beach area there are 740 households comprising approximately 1,850 people that face problems with adequate food supplies. The problem is severe for almost 1,200 of those people (Bridges to a Healthier Community, 2001).

Recently the Service Integration Team (Project MANA, Tahoe Women's Services, Children's Cabinet and Sierra Recovery Center) started a "points system." The concept is to get our clients involved in programs and to take advantage of opportunities that will increase their resources and strengthen family assets. The dilemma for us and other agencies is the reality that when someone is struggling to make it day to day, paycheck to paycheck, they don't think about the future. They're in survival mode and are only thinking about today.

The results of taking a course in "life management" are not immediately tangible; a class is not going to help them right this minute, when they need help the most. The question has always been "How do we get people the resources they need to move from survival to the next level, from temporary solutions to sustainable ones?"

The points system is designed to do just that. It gives our clients something to hold in their hand. When they earn points for attending classes or volunteering for agencies, they can trade them in for items that are going to help them. They feel good about the fact that at the end of the day they have been productive and accomplished something.