“Give them something to eat.” Love in the Time of Covid

Charity, giving of one's self to meet the needs of others, has been an inspiring and reassuring theme in 2020. Millions who work in health care, grocery stores, public transportation, scientific research, and many other essential industries have put their lives on the line every day for nine months (appropriately) to serve their fellow citizens.  To many of us, they have been lights in the darkness, and we have reason to hope their efforts will soon bear fruit.  

We can all be forgiven for a certain amount of pandemic fatigue and along with it some "charity fatigue." But for those of us who have been wishing we could do more, here's another candle you could light this December: help to ameliorate the growing crisis of hunger in the wake of the pandemic. 

Teachers have long understood one thing:  hungry students are not attentive students.  Nationally and globally in this time of Covid-19, the number of hungry children is skyrocketing.  In 2018, 11 million children in the United States were “food insecure,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  That’s one in seven, whose parents did not know where the next meal would come from.  In 2020, because of rising unemployment and shutdowns, we are on track for 18 million children (one in four) experiencing food insecurity. 

Worldwide, the picture is bleaker and less euphemistic.  After two decades of stunning gains, with more than one billion people lifted out of hunger and poverty in the developing world, the World Bank and the UN are predicting reversal:  over one hundred million people are expected to fall back into extreme poverty, and add millions more to the nine million people who die of starvation annually.  As a result of the pandemic’s economic damage, they will starve to death.

​At the Core Virtues Foundation, we are keenly aware of this plight because of one of our own schools is located in an impoverished region of western Kenya.  Our Lady of Grace School (OLG) in Kisumu is a K-8 school for orphaned and vulnerable children, and it offers both breakfast and lunch to its needy students.   For most of its students (HIV orphans), these are their only meals in the day.  When Kenya, like nations around the world, closed its schools in March, that lifeline was lost.  OLG’s staff and teachers mobilized to assemble foodstuffs (along with lessons), and do remote food drop off for children and their guardians.  But multiply this need by hundreds of millions in Africa and Asia, and you can guess at the dimensions of the problem.

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​​One of history’s greatest teachers, whose birth we celebrate this month, would agree.  Jesus of Nazareth’s teaching attracted thousands of followers, and he was so “moved with pity for the crowd” that he refused to disburse them on empty stomachs.  “Give them something to eat” was his command to his disciples, and, according to the gospels, five loaves and two fishes became sustenance for the five thousand (with baskets leftover).  That example inspired Salvation Army founders, William and Catherine Booth, and American settlement house founder, Jane Addams, and “Houses of Hospitality” founder Dorothy Day to each launch initiatives to feed the hungry. Thousands of non-profits continue that work worldwide.

If you are in a position to assist, we urge your generosity to today’s champions against hunger.  The following two organizations are four-star charities, working tirelessly to feed the hungry in our nation and abroad. ​But don’t forget your local food banks and shelters.

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Feeding America at https://www.feedingamerica.org/
Action Against Hunger https://www.actionagainsthunger.org

Be a light in the darkness:   “Give them something to eat.”

Mary Beth Klee