“Give someone a fish, and you’ll feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish, and you’ve fed them for a lifetime.” The origin of this quote is hotly contested, but its validity is most certainly not. Self-sufficiency is a sure way to promote better health outcomes within a community. But what happens when the
My journey with Food for Others began in 2009, when I was going through a really tough time in my life. I had been in a traumatic event which put me into a depression and someone suggested that trying to give back to my community might help distract me from everything I had going on
As the Executive Director of a food bank/pantry, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to reach hungry people in our community. Even though we serve over 30,000 individuals each year, we know that 75,000 people live in poverty in Northern Virginia. That gap keeps me up at night. How do we reach
I have been at Food for Others for about three years as one of our volunteers. I will be starting my fourth year in 2020. For my first two and a half years I worked on the Power Pack Program, but now I work on both sides of the warehouse : in P3 and as
How much food do you think you throw away every year? Ten pounds? Twenty pounds? The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that each American tosses out 225-290 pounds of food annually. That’s the weight of two teenagers! You can do the math – a family of four creates roughly one thousand pounds of food waste
We have an audacious goal at Food for Others this holiday season. We know that there are families in need of food that we’re not reaching, and we’re going to do something about it. We’re counting on you to help. A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the economics of living in our region
A lot of food goes to waste in the typical U.S. family’s kitchen. TIME reported that the average family throws away $640 worth of food every year. That’s enough to feed a family of four for a whole month! At Food for Others, it is important for us to try to reduce this waste in
$114,105 is the amount that a family of four needs to earn to live comfortably in Fairfax County according to the Economic Policy Institute. $33,745 is the maximum amount a family of four can earn in Virginia and still qualify for SNAP (formerly food stamps) benefits. Do you see the gap there? In one Fairfax
Reducing Food Waste: It can start in our own kitchens I really hate to throw away food. As a volunteer at Food for Others, I’m continually reminded that hunger is very real, food is not free, and each one of us can be a force for good in the fight against hunger. According to the
Wegmans in Fairfax has launched its Check out Hunger campaign benefiting Food for Others. From now through December 14, when shoppers check out at Wegmans in Fairfax, cashiers will give them the option to add a donation to Food for Others. For several years, Check out Hunger has helped Food for Others fight food insecurity
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