SoSA Executive Director Lynette Johnson will be a featured speaker at the inaugural New York City Food Tank Summit on September 13. The theme is “Focusing on Food Loss and Food Waste” and will be held in partnership with Rethink Food Waste Through Economics and Data (ReFED), with support from The Rockefeller Foundation and The Fink Family Foundation.
The event is sold out, but you can follow it live on facebook.
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
When we glean, people will often ask – a little shyly — if it’s okay to eat something in the field: sample a ripe, red tomato, or grab a bite of a watermelon that broke trying to get it in the truck. I always tell them yes, and so do the farmers.
Our good farmer friend, Charlie Barbee, who this time of year takes groups of us into ...
Continue Reading →By Jean Blish Siers *
Teenagers threw watermelons at me this week. Really big watermelons. And if I’m honest, and I try to be, sometimes it really hurt. But I didn’t mind. Why? Because we were gleaning at a local farm and were able to send those watermelons off to agencies in four counties. We loaded trucks; we loaded cars; we loaded SUVs. And while we broke a few, we would take ...
By Jean Blish Siers *
There’s a great internet meme that shows up in my Facebook feed pretty often. It’s the wonderful Pope Francis saying, “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That is how prayer works.” I love the quote and every time it pops up, it makes me smile. It reminds me of James 2:26: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is ...
Picture 150 bike riders under a huge, blue sky, cruising across the wide-open plains of Nebraska for four days. This June, for the 22nd year, the Nebraska United Methodist Bike Ride for Hunger (NUMB) will bring riders together from across the country to pedal about 250 miles in a huge circle route in the State of Nebraska. For the second year in a row, part of the proceeds of the ride will support the Society of St. Andrew. While last ...
Continue Reading →Let the Sweet Potatoes Roll!
In Southern Louisiana, one often hears the Cajun expression, “Laissez les bons temps rouler!” – “Let the good times roll!” But on the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge, it’s a good time when the sweet potatoes roll at the annual sweet potato drop. They roll in on a truck, get bagged up by a large number of student volunteers, and they roll out in agency trucks, vans, and trailers to feed the hungry across ...
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