Shown in 2008, Kenny Roberts, a warehouseman at the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma, puts a pallet of pudding cups onto a storage shelf. File
I had breakfast with a side dish of harsh reality this morning.
I went to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma's third annual Hunger's Hope fundraiser.
Quiche and a lot of hard facts were on the menu.
One in six families in eastern Oklahoma is at risk of food insecurity.
One in five Oklahoma children is at risk of going to bed hungry tonight.
That means Oklahoma is the eighth hungriest state in the nation.
The food bank is doing some remarkable things fighting those statistics.
In the last fiscal year, it distributed 9.5 million pounds of food with a retail value of $16.5 million in eastern Oklahoma.
That translates into 7.4 million meals.
The food bank runs a huge warehouse on the north side of downtown, from which it distributes food to other charities throughout the region.
The food is is bought from contributions, given to the bank by the federal government and contributed by local restaurants and retailers who would rather see it given away than spoil.
Part of the food bank's operation is a commercial kitchen that takes perishable food donations and turns it into storeable meals.
Before the kitchen went into operation, the food bank saw about 30 percent of its food go to waste because of spoilage. Now that number is down to 3 percent to 5 percent and if they can figure out a way to freeze lettuce, they'll knock it down even more, said Executive Director Sara Waggoner.
Give the food bank $1 and it turns into seven meals, but give the food bank a pallet of won ton wrappers and it turns it into frozen lasagna.
In her speech, Waggoner quoted my favorite Bible verse, Micah 6:8 -- "…what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?"
She said that ten years ago she had a personal crisis and was considering leaving her job at a food bank.
When she went to talk to her father about her future, he pulled a piece of paper out of a drawer. It was a drawing she had made in Sunday School when she was 10 years old. She had been told to pick her favorite Bible verse and to illustrate it.
She chose Micah 6:8 and illustrated it with a picture of herself giving away a bag of food.
She didn't change jobs.
Contributions to the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma can be mailed to 1304 N. Kenosha Ave.; Tulsa OK 74106.
The agency's telephone number is 585-2800 and they love giving tours.
