(Yes, Eudora, there is a great short story titled “Why I Live at the P.O.”)
During the boom economy, canned food drives always seemed odd to me. When a supermarket had a barrel near the door for customers to place an extra food staple for the poor, I would not comply. It was so blatant how the grocery manages to take its percentage first. Yet I usually gave pantry items to off-site drives for homeless shelters and the like. Some years I’d leave food for the mailman to pick up. Now that the economy has turned, it’s even more important that nonprofits insist that businesses donate to these groups (whose needs surely are growing) at the wholesale level. Isn’t it perverse for every business up and down the line to first make a buck off the poor even as it brands itself benevolent?
Now in my Fayetteville, Mayor Lioneld Jordan is setting up a permanent can dropoff schedule: “When I ran for office, one thing I said we’d do is have a yearlong food drive.”
While I don’t want wholesalers or the stockrooms of individual groceries to dump dented or bloated cans on those who need the best nutrition, aren’t these the most economically efficient and least hypocritical places from which to gather food donations?
• • •
In the world of beneficial agencies, Northwest Arkansas has the Care Foundation, set up in 1998 from profits of the sale of the Northwest Health System. The morning paper writes up one of its periodic grant releases, this set for educational programs.
Chris Stecklein, Care program officer, noted one program “helps build life experiences for students who are relatively new to the country. A trip to the Walton Arts Center, for example, provided one student his first ride in an elevator.
‘We try to work with schools to develop innovative ways to provide kids experiences they may not have had otherwise,’ he said.”
Don’t frown. Don’t you see the bright side? At least tax money isn’t going for rides to the theater balcony.
