These people are forced to rely on food banks and pantries to get by. in the article is says that “almost five million people went to food pantries last year, up from 4 million the year before. About 625,000 ate in soup kitchens.”

The full article is worth reading if only for the snapshots of local families dealing with food insecurity like this one:

Coleen McEneany used to be a private investigator. Her husband worked for Circuit City as an information technology specialist. But the PI work dried up in the recession, and Circuit City closed. With their daughter, they moved into the Fremont home of her mother, a retired sixth-grade teacher. While the home has a pool in back and well-tended garden, the family resources were stretched so thin that they now depend on food and help from Tri-City Volunteers. Ironically, she knew about the food pantry because she and her husband were both donors to the program back when they were working. Nevertheless, with a degree in criminal justice, Coleen has hopes that she’ll somehow find a job. In the meantime, she is taking courses for a degree in early childhood education.

If you or someone you know needs help with food, 2-1-1 is a great place to start to find a food bank or pantry.  There are ways to fight hunger in the Bay Area, for ideas go here.

NICOS Enrollment Specialist Corina Liew helped Serena Chen obtain Healthy Families coverage for her 15-year-old son. As a massage therapist, Chen earns too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, but does not receive insurance through her employer.

Jenny Li of San Francisco lost her health insurance and her job as a line supervisor at a Bay Area electronics manufacturer because the company relocated to Mexico in 2007. The loss of insurance would have had devastating effects. Jenny’s teenage son is challenged by mental-health issues that require two types of medication and regular psychiatric visits. Thankfully, a friend referred Jenny to the NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, a United Way grantee that helps community members access and enroll in California’s Healthy Families program, which helps children access no- and low-cost health insurance.

“I am so thankful for NICOS and Healthy Families,” Jenny said. “Without them, I don’t know what I would do. Until I find work again, I can’t afford to pay for my son’s medical costs on my own.”

Unfortunately, more than 874,000 children,including Jenny’s son, could lose their health coverage if Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010/11 passes. We have seen this threat before. In 2008, United Ways across California called on legislators and the governor’s office to ensure no children lost their health coverage.

United Way is gearing up to fight once again. Under the governor’s current proposal, the Healthy Families program would be eliminated  unless California is able to obtain federal funding, which is highly risky and uncertain. Even if funding is appropriated, the proposal would still eliminate coverage for at least 200,000 children with new eligibility and cost-sharing requirements, as well as significant benefit reductions.

We are on the front lines of the fight for California’s children. We know that health insurance for all children is one of the most cost-effective ways to support their long-term success. “Children who are healthy are more likely to do well in school and in life,” said Anne Wilson, CEO, United Way of the Bay Area. “We urge the governor and the legislature
to stop these short-sighted cuts, which will force children into more costly types of care.”

Take Action Today!

We need your help to save the Healthy Families program. Please urge your legislators to reject Schwarzenegger’s proposal. We’ve made it easy—visit mainsite.uwba.org/news/healthychildren. With just a few clicks you can send an email your legislators about Healthy Families. Learn more by contacting United Way’s Susan Jeong at 415.808.4359 or sjeong@uwba.org.

The Extraordinaires' new project is helping to sort through the flood of images emerging from Haiti

The pictures of the devastation in Haiti, have caused an incredible outpouring of support from business and individuals around the world. Along with the usual organizations that are on the frontlines when disasters strike, there are a number of technology organizations (from Google to Ushahidi to Frontline SMS), working around the clock with the State Department on a coordinated effort, that uses technology to support the relief efforts in Haiti.

The Extraordinaries (which we’ve written about before) has teamed up with these organizations to help.  According to an email they sent to us, they’ve just built a Haiti Earthquake Support Center with brand new image recognition technology, which provides two ways that volunteers can micro-volunteer anywhere they have access to the internet.

Here’s how people can help, right now, from right here at home:

The Image Tagger — Micro-volunteers can help sort through news photos coming out of Haiti and categorize (tag) them with keywords like “adult, child, alive, deceased.” Never before has there been a system that can bring together thousands of photos from across the web and have them sorted by live human beings (no computer could ever know that there is a teenager in a photo).

The Matcher — A system that matches faces of missing people to faces in photos coming from Haiti. The goal is to help desperate families find their loved ones. Volunteers use the matcher to look for a missing person in images that have been tagged with the image tagger. This system will be live very soon.

At United Way, we decided to ask our employees and community members to share, in their own words, a memorable volunteer experience they’ve had.  Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing some of them here in the blog. Today’s post comes from Nic Hunter.

When I first moved to San Francisco 4 years ago, I didn’t know anyone. A co-worker of mine said that the best way to make friends was to start volunteering. I’d never volunteered before, so this was a completely strange concept to me. But I figured it was worth a shot and that I would try it out. While walking around town, I came across this neat store in the Castro called Under One Roof which I found out was a non-profit organization run by volunteers. The purpose of the store was to generate funds for agencies that provide HIV/AIDS education and support services. This was such a neat concept that I knew I had to be a part of it. And I hoped that by volunteering for something that I thought was a worthwhile cause, I would also meet people with the same mind frame that I could become friends with.

Four years and hundreds of volunteer hours later, I’m still with Under One Roof. With my professional experience in the non-profit field, I’ve been able to assist them with various things from one spectrum to the other. And on top of that, I’ve got my set days (every Monday and Wednesday night after work for three hours) that I’m in the store helping out with the retail aspect.

People have commented on my volunteer schedule, stating that I devote a significant amount of time to volunteering and wonder how it’s possible that I can work, volunteer, and still have time for myself to do the things that I enjoy. To me, it’s a pretty simple answer – I volunteer because it’s something that I do enjoy, and therefore it’s not a burden. From the friends that I’ve met (either fellow volunteers or faithful customers), each shift that I am there is always fun. So to me, I’m giving back to my community and having a good time.

I’ve branched out since then and, while I still volunteer my time with Under One Roof, I’ve begun the process of starting to volunteer with other agencies (National AIDS Memorial Grove and PAWS SF) to assist with as well. I know that no one person can do everything for a community, but one person can do something. Even if that something is small or seems insignificant, it will ultimately spark a fire in someone else to invigorate them to volunteer. To this day my friends still say that I am a “serial do-gooder” but to me I’m just having doing my part to give back to my community and having fun at the same time.

A line forms at a San Francisco food pantry

The number of Americans lacking consistent access to food is at the highest level since government records began. This represents an increase of 13 million people from last year.   More than 49 million Americans are in households struggling with what the report calls ‘food insecurity.’ Those with very high food insecurity – which amounted to a third of the total number – were households that either did not have enough money food; or forced members of the household to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise go without food at some point in the year. According to the USDA press release:

• The other two-thirds generally had enough to eat, but only by eating cheaper or less varied foods and by relying on government aid like food stamps, or visiting food banks and/or soup kitchens. According to the report released by the Department of Agriculture:

• Of the 49.1 million people living in food insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).

• 17.3 million people lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security,” a USDA term (previously denominated “food insecure with hunger”).  That means one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This was up from 11.9 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2000.

• Very low food security had been getting worse even before the recession. The number of people in this category in 2008 is more than double the number in 2000.

• Black (25.7 percent) and Hispanic (26.9 percent) households experienced food insecurity at far higher rates than the national average.

In California as a whole, 16% of the population had low or very low food insecurity – a situation that is most likely being compounded by the state’s continued rising unemployment.

In the Bay Area, the situation is no less grim. According to United Way’s Laura Escobar, who directs our Emergency Food and Shelter Program, “Here in the Bay Area, as an increasing number of families have turned to food banks and pantries, it has become harder to meet the demand.”

“Most food banks and pantries are reporting an average of 40% increase in demand for their programs since January 2009.  Families who are new to the programs and have never asked for assistance are coming in at an unprecedented rate,” she said.

If you would like to help, make a food or monetary donation to your local food bank, start a food drive, or volunteer at pantry or soup kitchen.  Every bit helps.

Read More.