USDANEWS VOLUME 58 NO.1 - JANUARY 1999
by Jim Borland, Office of Communications
"We're from the government and we're here to help." It seems that well-worn punch line typically has been delivered tongue-in- cheek--until now.
In communities across the country, USDA employees gave that saying a whole new meaning during the past year, as they donated their time, money, food, and efforts to community shelters, food banks, feeding centers, and other charitable organizations.
 David Sweany (center), FSA county executive director for
Saline County, Kan., gently guides a forklift under several bags of potatoes,
while Rebecca Baier (right), a personnel specialist with the FSA State
Office in Manhattan, Kan., uses foot power to push a box of potatoes across the
floor. They, along with other Kansas colleagues from ES, FSA, and NRCS,
recently volunteered to help sort, bag, and load 45,000 pounds of potatoes
donated for distribution to needy persons in Kansas. This USDA field gleaning
project typified recent efforts by employees across the country to help fight
hunger and assist hungry citizens.--Photo by Trish Smith |
"We asked agencies to come up with creative ways to help the hungry, and their creativity shows in the diversity of activities," said Martha Newton, a program specialist with the Food and Nutrition Service and coordinator of the "Making a Difference in 30 Days" anti-hunger campaign, which was held Departmentwide last November. "And most agencies held a traditional food drive too."
USDA employees across the country have participated in similar Departmentwide initiatives in the past. They were active in the "USDA Challenge Against Hunger" during September 1997, as well as the "Leading America in Feeding America" effort which took place in early 1998. The March 1998 issue of the USDA News carried a story about those two initiatives.
In 1998, employee-sponsored food donations--including food drives and food recovery and gleaning activities--totaled more than three million pounds. But employees didn't stop there. During November and December, volunteerism ran rampant through USDA.
For instance, in Oklahoma a coalition of USDA agencies--the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Rural Development--joined with the non-profit organization "Feed the Children" to provide assistance to local residents in need.
Anthony Lovelace, an NRCS soil conservationist in the agency's Clinton, Okla., field office, along with NRCS soil conservation technicians Dewayne Hudson and Josh Moore, were some of the more than 100 USDA employees who spent over 1,000 hours packing food boxes for the hungry, sorting and distributing coats for kids, and staffing donation centers.
 It's a little after 5 a.m. in the kitchen of Honolulu's only emergency, 24-hour walk-in shelter, as RD State Director Francis Blanco, NRCS State Conservationist Ken Kaneshiro, and FSA State Executive Director Jo-Anna Nakata (L to R) slice potatoes to serve to 300 homeless persons. It was part of recent efforts by USDA employees in Hawaii to help fight hunger. Meanwhile, much further to the east...  ...Belinda Bell
(right), an NRCS resource conservationist in the USDA state office in Little
Rock, Ark., and that office's food drive coordinator, laughs as she asks local
resident Lola Irvin about her favorite recipe for serving cabbage. In
fact, those boxes of cabbages are part of the 1,150 pounds of food which USDA's
state-office employees helped to collect--during three food drives in 1998--for
local homeless persons.--Photos by Lynn Howell, Bobby Bell |
As a part of the Forest Service's "We Are Here, And We Care" agencywide campaign, employees in the agency's Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Denver purchased the ingredients for a dinner, and then prepared and served it for 40 teenagers at a local homeless shelter.
"We did a food drive, but we wanted to do more," said Steve Gimple, a FS personnel management specialist in the Denver office. "So six of us took up a collection, bought the food, prepared it--we even baked pies--and served it to the 40 kids at the shelter."
And while FNS employees--through the agency's food assistance programs--help feed the hungry every day, one employee takes "Making a Difference" to a new level. "It started out as an assignment, and ended up as a passion," said Joyce Ann Loiselle, FNS food program specialist in the agency's Northeast Regional Office in Boston, of her involvement with the Chelsea, Mass., kitchen. In her free time, Loiselle runs the kitchen, where 60 to 100 people are fed every Saturday.
Speaking about the members of her 'work family' who began volunteering at the kitchen during the 'Making a Difference' campaign--and who continue to do so–she said, "The Northeast Regional Office staff have adopted my kitchen. They've been absolute angels."
The Foreign Agricultural Service lived up to the 'service' in its name, with more than 50 headquarters office employees volunteering at five charitable organizations in the Washington metropolitan area.
"A key part of our mission is providing food donations internationally," said FAS management analyst Rand Ruggieri. "Going out into our community and working to help feed the hungry helped us put a face on hunger here in the U.S. and around the world too."
Ruggieri also noted that volunteer efforts helped bring agency staff closer together. "There's really no issue of rank," he observed, "when you're chopping vegetables or deboning turkeys right next to your boss."
Agricultural Research Service employees in Beltsville, Md., have tied their efforts at gleaning and food recovery with community service requirements that area schools set for their students, as well as community service hours that may be required as part of a court sentence for misdemeanors. "We work hands-on with the students and others in our Sustainable Agriculture field plots to help harvest the surplus produce," explained ARS secretary Margritt Mason.
 "Now,
just how did I get this gig, again?" muses NRCS Georgia state conservation
engineer John McEvoy, as he scrubs a pot at a soup kitchen in Athens,
Ga. State Office employees from FSA, NRCS, and RD in Athens recently competed
to see which agency could donate the most food and supplies to an area shelter.
Members of the losing agency would have to wash dishes for the soup kitchen's
noon meal--for 130 people. The desire to avoid dishpan hands "rallied the
employees to a new level of commitment," observed FSA State Executive
Director Hanson Carter. And the results? The contest was declared a tie.--Photo by E.J. Stapler |
"We want to help with local feeding programs in the short run-- and, in the long run, help educate students about what the mission of ARS is, so they may consider careers in science and research." More than 100,000 pounds of produce were gleaned at Beltsville last year.
And in an old-fashioned but well-meaning "us against them" battle for food drive supremacy, two groups of employees at the Rapid City, S.D., USDA service center waged a 'food fight' for charity.
"Cases of food started turning up on the other side of the building," said David Adrian, a Rural Development manager at the service center. "So we bought bigger cases of food and sacks of potatoes for our team's side of the building. But the real winner was the food bank."
In all, according to Pat Gross, a coordinator for rural development in South Dakota, the USDA service center's 38 employees collected more than 1,000 pounds of food in a month, delivered the food to a local food bank and mission, and volunteered their help serving meals at the mission for three days.
"So in the end," affirmed Newton, "the Department's 'Making a Difference' anti-hunger campaign wasn't just about a food drive. It wasn't just about feeding hungry people."
"It was about USDA employees in every agency reaching out--and making a difference--to those less fortunate in our communities."
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