Children in need: Pasco's Food Desert and food insecurity

Hello Co-op,
Pardon me for sending you another email this week, But I thought this issue was very important.

I’m writing this email to tell you about a personal story that I’ve been hearing a lot from fellow board members in the co-op and people from our community. Ever since the great recession in 2008 the Pasco economy has tanked creating widespread suffering for many residents in our community. Economic hardships have hit our children the worst. In this 60 minutes piece you can learn more about how the recession has hit Florida’s children the hardest. http://youtu.be/dK_RnxYdrqU

The story that I heard was from one of our board members Barbara, a family member was volunteering at a local charity collecting letters from children in need Christmas gifts. In many of the letters children instead of asking for toys, or bikes, or ponies, or xboxes were asking for food instead. This wasn’t an infrequent scenario its estimated in Pasco county the number of children who go to bed hungry every night is in the thousands with their parents dependent on help to make sure food is there. Statistics for health in Pasco: http://www.doh.state.fl.us/chdpasco/publications/Pasco_Community_Health_Profile_Report_2010.pdf

Current economic hardships experienced by residents of Pasco County have lead
to an increase in applications for nutrition services never experienced before. In 2009,
food insecurity in Pasco County is at an all time high: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) applications up 75%; WIC participation up 18%; and Free/Reduced
Lunch participation now covers 48% of all children enrolled in district schools. In 2008,
4.1% of all households in America accessed emergency food from a food pantry at least
once. It was also seen in 2008 that 55% of food insecure households participated at least
in one of three major food assistance programs (WIC, SNAP, or School Lunch Program).
It is anticipated that demand for these essential nutrition programs will continue to
increase well into 2010.

We at the co-op have a year long goal of hoping to create an avenue to help change this. We hope to connect with the local master gardeners, local schools, restaurants, growers, churches, farmers and anyone in our community willing to help to weave a local food resilience. We hold our future is something we are all co-responsible for making sure each individual child has a way of learning how to grow their own food, learn necessary skills to create food resilience (Canning, cooking, preparing food), and create economic opportunities for the local agriculture sector for young adults seeking to become organic farmers. Together we can co-create a new story of our community rising together to tackle food insecurity. Our vision is simple thousands of victory gardens connected using the internet. We can do it. You can help!

How you can help?
Bring Cans of food, donations of toys, donation of clothes, or gifts for a child in Pasco when you come to pick up your order: We will work at getting these donations to the appropriate local non profits.
Join as a owner/member of the co-op and get involved with the co-op via participating as a volunteer. We will make available in the future opportunities to volunteer at schools growing food.
Join us at future permablitzes where we will construct victory gardens for local residents in Pasco or Pinellas.
Purchase from our local market weekly as much or as little as you can. Your purchase invests money into local people to grow more local food. Grown by us, for us!
Sign our petition to get school victory gardens at every school in Pasco county: http://www.change.org/petitions/pasco-county-school-board-grow-vegetable-gardens-and-fruit-orchards-at-pasco-schools-k-12
Share the co-op with your friends, family, neighborhood, organizations, churches, businesses and more so we can connect more people to our cause of food resilience.
Volunteer at the Habitat for Humanity Kinship garden Wednesdays and Saturdays: We have 3 acres at the back of our customer pick-up location that is not utilized to its fullest capacity. We can work together to grow more food to provide for the local community. Contact Rick the garden manager for more information on volunteering: varick789@yahoo.com
Volunteer at the Peace learning garden every other Sunday in Downtown New Port Richey in front of Peace hall across from Sims park. Contact Denise the garden manager for more information on volunteering: houston.denise@gmail.com
We live in a current food desert and we can change that! There is too much fast food and not enough fresh food!

We are hosting regular free film showings revolved around food and book study on critical thought provoking books. Check all our events out at our meet-up and share with your friends. If everyone got 3 people involved with the co-op we could grow quickly and be more effective at re-localizing our local food. Our Meet-up page: http://www.meetup.com/Suncoast-Co-op/

We have plenty of eager growers who are creating food, what we need most right now are customers to support these growers. You can still order till noon today and we will also have fresh vegetables available for sale on Saturdays as well. Make sure to place an order whenever you can your participation with our co-op is critical to our success and we are always open to feedback from the community. Get involved with the co-op this next year if you would like to lead in these endeavors.

Thanks,
Eric Stewart