The first meeting of the year will be Tuesday, September 7 at 7pm. Dr. Nick Wolterstorff will be discussing “The Moral Significance of Poverty.”

It is always interesting to attempt to explain my job to a new acquaintance. Many in West Michigan are unaware that there is a need for a Pantry Network in Kent County, let alone nearly 20,000 individuals monthly who use the pantries within the Network. Last fall, when I was new to Access I was explaining my job to a new acquaintance and his response was incredulous advice: “Well, you should go to Africa sometime, they’ve got real poverty there!”

I bridled the defiant response that arose in my throat, wisely deciding against replying that I had, in fact, spent time in an impoverished country in West Africa and saw plenty of so called “real” need. My internal reaction to his statement was to take the defensive and write him off as an ignorant cynic who was consciously ignoring the needy in his own community. But in truth, his comment was something I had thought before, never in such verbal boldness, but my mind had danced around the subject of “real” need. Do we have that raw, gripping poverty in the United States that exists in developing nations? Even if 1 in 6 Americans is food insecure, even if there are 17 million children living in food insecure households, and even if there are over 85,000 people in Kent County who live below the poverty line and nearly 60,000 of them utilized a pantry one or more times last year. Do these statistics mean anything if our idea of poverty isn’t extreme? What then is the reasoning behind the Pantry Network?

A few months ago we interviewed a pantry client at North End Community Ministries for the Food for Families Food Drive put on by Spartan Stores and TV13. The client was a young, white female who told the story of losing her job and needing the extra food in order to feed her family of four. Her husband’s job was stable but he simply couldn’t bring in enough money without his wife’s income to pay every bill, every cost, and every need. They were forced to choose between paying off bills for their home and purchasing food, a decision all too common in our current economy. They never thought they would need to utilize a food pantry, but there she was, driven by need to provide for her family.

Thinking about her story makes me choke back tears, knowing that she might have been my friend, my sister, my mother, or even myself. Putting a face on poverty makes it real; the abstract became concrete as I listened to her experiences. After that day I no longer wondered whether poverty exists, I had seen it face to face. This woman jarred me out of the statistics, out of the questions of whether hunger is real in Kent County or not. It is, and as this woman stood before me I saw in her eyes genuine gratitude and her hope for the future. She said that utilizing the food pantry was imperative for her in this trying time. I cannot do anything but believe her.

The difference between Kent County, Michigan and the impoverished areas of West Africa is not that severe hunger cannot exist in our comfortable region; rather, the difference is that the work of the Pantry Network in Kent County is preventative. Thus, severe hunger is kept at bay. As I think back to the comment that frustrated me and put me on the defense my heart has been changed. I now think of that comment with joy and gratefulness that God has given this community the tools to build a Network that supports the vulnerable by connecting them to food and resources. Praise God for equipping us to eliminate hunger in West Michigan. May He continue the work He has started here.

To register, please click here.  For more information about this simulation, please contact Nicole at nicole@accessofwestmichigan.org

To register, please click here. If you would like more information, please contact Nicole, Poverty Education Director, at nicole@accessofwestmichigan.org

Participants role play the lives of various family profiles living in the state of poverty. This workshop is guaranteed to provide an understanding and give insight into life in poverty that many people in Kent County face. Volunteers share their real life stories of living in poverty and working with low-income families, while facilitators give resources and additional information for opportunities to respond.

For more information or to sign up, please contact Nicole DeVries at nicole@accessofwestmichigan.org

The idea: issue a seasonal electronic benefits card to families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches during the academic year.”

Click here to read the article 16 Million Hungry Kids and 1 New Way to Feed Them.

To read this inspiring article in its entirety, click here.