As summer gives way to autumn the data is in. People in Lake County care about feeding the hungry and that”s a good thing because there are a lot of hungry people in Lake County. How many? According to data from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research”s California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), at least 4 million low-income Californians struggle with food insecurity and 9,000 of them are in Lake County. Local research shows the number of food insecure families to be much higher, estimating that 11,462 adults and 3,371 children in Lake County are living in poverty.
California Food Policy Advocates define food insecurity as “the inability to consistently afford enough food.” The Lake County Data comes from 2010 and as a pastor in a church which has a food pantry I can tell you that the numbers have not gone down. Our food pantry served four times the number of people last year than we did in 2010.
So what are we doing to meet the need? Local churches are working together. Memorial Day weekend the Lake County Fair allowed us to do a major food drive where anyone who brought four cans of food to the fair could gain free entry on Sunday morning. We estimate that close to 1,000 people brought four cans or more, We collected over 300 cases of food, which were distributed to 11 different food outreach programs reaching almost every community around the lake. We would like to thank Holdenried Harvesting for transporting the food from the fairgrounds and Mendo Mill for turning their warehouse over to us to sort and prepare it for distribution.
Recipients of food collected at the Lake County fair include food outreach programs at the following places: First Lutheran Church in Lucerne, United Christian Parish in Lakeport, Galilee Lutheran in Kelseyville, Upper Lake UMC, Kelseyville PC & UMC, Middletown UMC, Lower Lake UMC, Clearlake UMC, Clearlake Oaks UMC, Lucerne Alpine Senior Center and One Step Away. A
ll of the above agencies would welcome your ongoing food donations, because hunger and poverty exist year round. Can we make a difference? Lake County CAN!
