Organizations like Second Harvest help feed the growing numbers of hungry in the Inland Northwest

Tens of thousands of people in Spokane County, says Melissa Cloninger, do not know where their next meal will come from.

“It’s staggering,” says Cloninger, who is Director of Community and Corporate Relations for Second Harvest, a non-profit that receives and distributes food to neighborhood food banks and meal centers throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho. People in need, she says, “literally do not know where their next meal will come from. They do not have food within easy access: not in their home, not in their pantry. They don’t have the cash resources to buy food.”

Cloninger quotes some statistics: One in nine people in Spokane County does not know where their next meal will come from. Four in ten people who seek help from food banks are children, and one in ten are seniors.

“The middle class are the new face of hunger,” Cloninger says. “A large portion of the people we serve were already on the margins. But another, growing portion, from what we’ve seen, are older, better educated, and have been, for the most part, middle class. Many are people with a car payment, a mortgage, and kids in college. They are coming to food banks for help.”

Losing a job in this economy can result in some very tough choices, she says. “People then have to ask, which bill do I not pay? Or do I not eat?”

Cloninger says projects like OFM are crucial to feeding those in need

The Episcopal Diocese of Spokane is training leaders to take on hunger during the season of Lent through it’s newest outreach, Organizing for Mission (OFM). Cloninger says that outreach programs like OFM, where common people of faith raise money for local and global hunger initiatives, are now more important than ever. “People think that hunger in our communities is an overwhelming problem, that there’s nothing one person can do about it,” she says. “In a country such as ours, with such incredible wealth, collectively we can do something about it!”

Cloninger says that Second Harvest has more demand for food than they can process with their current infrastructure — not how much donated food is available. “This issue is no longer how much donated food we can resource,” she says. “What we are facing is a need to raise incremental dollars. The issue for us now is capacity.”

When efforts like OFM raise money to relieve local hunger, it has dramatic, positive impacts on people, she says. She recounts the story of “Daniel” (his named changed here to protect his privacy), a teenager in Spokane who was placed in a behavioral intervention class for acting out in school.

“The teachers noticed he wasn’t getting enough to eat,” she says. “He was only getting breakfast and lunch on school days. He didn’t have anything to eat for dinner or on the weekends.”

Second Harvest was able to provide food for him through a program called Kids Cafe, which provides nutritious food to children in need.

Within a matter of weeks, Cloninger says, he was moved out of that class, and there was a dramatic improvement in his grades. “That demonstrates the impact of having enough food, and nutritious food, can have, especially on children,” she says.

Return in the coming weeks as we continue to follow Ann and Dianna in their journey to address hunger locally and globally. For more information about OFM, visit the Organizing for Mission page on SpokaneDiocese.org.