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...I'm director of communications for Harvesters.
Harvesters is the regional food bank serving a 26 county area
of northwestern Missouri and northeastern Kansas,
including the Kansas City metropolitan area.
As a food bank we acquire, store, and distribute food
that we distribute through our network
of more than 620 non-profit agencies across our service area.
These include emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, child care facilities,
and others where meals are served.
Harvesters feeds 1 in every 8 people in our community right now.
That means that all of us probably know someone
who may have or will receive food assistance from Harvesters network.
They may not tell us that but we know
that they're very appreciative for the food they are receiving.
Over the last two years, as a result of the recession,
Harvesters network of non-profit agencies has seen about a 40% increase in the number of people
needing emergency food assistance and in many cases
these are families who are turning to our agencies
for help for food for the very first time.
This is related to the high unemployment rate, people losing jobs,
people being unemployed for a long period of time,
and exhausting unemployment benefits or other-other resources they might have.
We also think about this, especially in the winter time,
when people are paying heating bills.
We find that many of the people that are receiving assistance from Harvesters
are having to choose between very basic needs such as paying for utilities or electricity,
paying for housing, perhaps paying for medicine, and buying food.
They're facing tough choices and one of the ways that we're trying to help them
is to ensure that they have the food they need to be healthy.
Our community supports Harvesters and helps to feed the hungry
by giving food, giving time, giving money, and giving voice on behalf of those in need.
One of the most important ways people support us is by volunteering at our warehouse.
We love it when volunteers come.
We have about 4400 volunteer visits each month, people of all ages.
We have a lot of different volunteer activities.
If we had to replace our volunteer workforce with full-time employees,
we would have to hire an additional 70 full-time employees here at Harvesters.
So, that gives you some idea of just how important our volunteers are to us.
One of the ways people can volunteer is by holding their birthday party
or other celebration at Harvesters.
We ask them to invite their family and friends out to the warehouse, they get a tour,
they volunteer for a while, and they bring food instead of bringing gifts to the person.
We throw the birthday party, there's a cake, there's a party
and everyone goes home feeling really good about celebrating
and doing something to help someone in the community.
We had about 60 birthday parties here at Harvesters last year
celebrating birthdays that ran the gamut,
from very young to some people who were young at heart.
We're very grateful for all of our volunteers.
Metropolitan Community College has a group that is volunteering on Martin Luther King Day.
They will be out here during our Martin Luther King Day celebration.
We ask people to make it a day on, not a day off.
We'll have about 500 volunteers here that day
so we're very appreciative that Metropolitan Community College
is sending a group to help us sort and repackage food
as part of their recognition of Dr. King's legacy and his belief in community service.
[instrumental music]