Hunger/Homelessness

Koh's Department Stores announced an $800,000 donation to Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee to ensure that the emergency need for food is met now. The donation will help provide appropriate food supplies throughout the year for the approximately 35,000 people that rely on food pantries and soup kitchens in the area each month.

The New Jersey state government is providing $1,363,600 for N.J.’s six food banks to purchase food to hand out during the holiday season, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno announced Tuesday. The State Food Purchase Program aid provides $904,331 for Community FoodBank of New Jersey, $178,282 for Food Bank of South Jersey, $141,667 for the Foodbank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties, $59,640 for Mercer Street Friends, $50,786 for Southern Regional Food Distribution Center, and $28,891 for NORWESCAP.

Cargill and World Food Program USA (WFP USA), together with support from the American public, are joining together to bring more than 22 million pounds of rice — enough to feed nearly one million people for one month — to people who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition in the Horn of Africa.

The shipment of rice will go to support the United Nations World Food Program’s efforts in northeastern Kenya.

ACTION Against Hunger, a nonprofit group that fights malnutrition, is running a public service ad campaign that uses nontraditional, abstract imagery, rather than photos of starving children, to gain support.

Instead of employing photographs of starving children, the ads take a different tack. One shows a line of seven simple paper dolls; the doll in the middle is a stick figure compared with the other six. Copy in this ad says, “3.5 million children die each year from acute malnutrition. Take action. Save a child. ActionAgainstHunger.org.”

North Star Fund, New York's community foundation supporting grassroots groups leading the movement for equality, economic justice and peace, announced the Community Food Funders (CFF). CFF will support the growth of an equitable, ecologically sound and sustainable food system in New York, New Jersey and southern Connecticut. “More focus on a regional food system will mean more local jobs, a cleaner environment, and healthier people,” said Hugh Hogan, executive director of North Star Fund.

Good Neighbors USA, an international humanitarian relief and development NGO, has launched a new Facebook campaign to raise money to feed children in Haiti, Guatemala and Chad. Titled “Food For Kids,” Good Neighbors and one of its generous donors will donate 25 cents to a hungry child for every fan who “likes” the Good Neighbors Facebook Fan page.

In many developing nations, 25 cents can purchase one bowl of food. With this campaign, Good Neighbors’ goal is to feed 32,000 children by the end of the year.

Nineteen-year-old New York City student Orayne Williams knows a lot about how to avoid becoming a statistic. Last year Williams, who was abandoned by his family when he was 12 and spent his teen years living in homeless shelters, managed to graduate from high school with honors and enrolled at Manhattanville College on a full scholarship. His campus dormitory was his first non-shelter home in years. Last November, he founded a new nonprofit, the Progressive People Movement Inc., which hopes to help at-risk "youth break free from the cycles of homelessness, incarceration, poverty and failure."

A program supplying tons of food to food shelves around Minnesota, suspended by the state government shutdown, was quickly restored after a hunger organization filed a plea with the state.

Colleen Moriarty, executive director of the nonprofit Hunger Solutions Minnesota, said she read on the website of the state Department of Human Services that "food commodity distribution to food shelves" was being halted during the shutdown.

Moriarty said that created "plenty of panic" among food shelf and food bank operators.

MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a leader in the national anti-hunger community, has awarded more than $3 million to 286 carefully screened organizations fighting hunger in the United States, Israel and selected developing nations. Over its 25-year history, MAZON has made grants totaling more than $53 million.

For a complete list of 2011 grant recipients, please visit http://mazon.org/go/2011grants/

Kraft Foods, the U.S.-based food and beverage giant, has announced a $3.8 million initiative to help eradicate child malnutrition in Indonesia and Bangladesh in partnership with Helen Keller International.

Announced at a World Economic Forum meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, the program will fund 180 farming "centers of excellence" over the next four years in the East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) region of Indonesia and the Satkhira district of Bangladesh.