Family-to-Family: Feeds the Hungry
Today’s Dietitian
By Kate Jackson
Vol. 6 No. 3 p. 20

It sounds like a simple idea: Those who have give to those who need. Countless programs to feed the hungry are based upon that basic premise, but in most cases, the giving is a somewhat passive prospect. A person sends a check to a distant agency or puts cash in a receptacle of some sort, hoping it reaches those for whom it’s been solicited. After reading about a desperate need in a desperate place, a New York woman responded by creating a unique program that would not only feed the hungry, but nourish their minds and forge bonds among distant communities separated by miles and socioeconomic status.

Family-to-Family (F2F), a nonprofit endeavor conceived by Pam Koner, describes itself as a community-based hunger relief program for profoundly poor and hungry families in the United States. It links families that have more with families that have less, bridging communities of plenty with communities that have little. The economically stable families “adopt” the low-income families and each month prepare a package of food that will be shipped to them.

According to the organization’s Web site, F2F has no goal but to help fellow citizens. To accomplish that goal, it “taps into a vast reservoir of pent-up generosity.” The sponsoring families receive information about their adoptive families, who in turn write back to their sponsors, forging a bond that is profound and lasting. The F2F families send not just food but fellowship, and the receivers enjoy the sustained concern and bond of community that does not accompany typical donations of food or money.

The idea began in November 2002 in Hastings-on-Hudson, a suburb of New York, where the per-capita income was $48,914. Koner, a former fashion stylist and producer—then an entrepreneur who had developed a successful and respected childcare business—read an article in the New York Times detailing the poverty prevailing in the rural township of Pembroke, Ill., a forsaken place with a population of approximately 3,000 people and a per-capita income of $9,642. In this community—located one hour south of Chicago—almost 75% of the families with children under the age of 5 were below the poverty level. A mother of two, Koner was moved by the story of Pembroke—a town with only one doctor; no bus or train connection; sand and gravel roads; and dilapidated shacks with dirt floors, tires to hold down the roof, and no running water.

While others may have been equally moved by the story, Koner was compelled to act and soon developed a plan to help. Her first step was to try to contact the writer of the New York Times article to tap his knowledge of resources. She grew impatient waiting for him to call her back, so rather than sit and bide her time, she picked up the phone and was persistent in trying to contact town representatives—and F2F began its journey from vision to reality. When she finally got a hold of Pembroke’s Church of the Cross, she explained her concept to Rev Ron Walker and noted that she had access to many philanthropic families through her child care business that wanted to be involved.

Walker explained that the township’s shortage of food was particularly acute in the last week of the month, when food stamps were all but gone and pantries were especially bare. Koner asked whether or not it would be helpful if families on her end could come up with a week’s worth of food for a family in need and ship it to arrive before the last week of the month. Her concept involved more than simply getting food to hungry people. It embraced the equally important concept of community and sought to connect people at the same time that it fulfilled a practical need. “He said that would be perfect, so we created this program to make a connection through creative community that would let people look at things a little differently on both ends,” Koner explains.

Koner then wrote a letter to the community of families to which she was linked through her child care business. She explained her concept and invited them to participate. They all signed on, and F2F began with seven families in her community. Now, there are 75 linked families—75 in Pembroke and 75 in Hastings-on-Hudson, with approximately 800 participants on both ends. Since it began in 2002, F2F has sent upward of 10 tons of food to the people of Pembroke. Federal Express has delivered the packages free of charge to the Church of the Cross, where they’re distributed by Walker. Clearly, the project has had an enormous impact on the people of Pembroke. Today, she’s received two months’ worth of mail from Pembroke—photos and letters from the families who are supported by F2F.

THE FOOD PACKAGE
To determine the needs and tastes of the people of Pembroke, Koner asked the pastor for a list of foods that would be welcomed. The basic list includes staples such as rice and beans, macaroni and cheese, pasta and sauce, canned vegetables and fruits, crackers, and peanut butter and jelly. Now that new chapters have emerged, the basic food list may change to meet the requirements of the chapter families in need. Koner explains, for example, that a new chapter is being formed in the Appalachian town Beverly, Ky., where rice is not a staple of the diet and will not be eaten.

Each package includes seven dinner foods, which is a challenge on a limited budget. Koner tries to develop creative and unusual meal plans that emphasize inexpensive staples and dinners that might diverge somewhat from tradition—for example, oatmeal with raisins and applesauce for dinner. To keep costs down and still help the families provide nutritious meals, the program relies on generic foods and strategies for stretching the food dollars. A package might include, for example, five boxes of macaroni and cheese and an extra pound of dry macaroni. “I found that the cheese is awfully cheesy,” says Koner, “so it’s easy to add an extra pound of macaroni to make it easier to feed more people longer.”

F2F has branched out beyond Pembroke and Hastings-on-Hudson with 14 new chapters. Koner stays deeply involved to ensure that quality and consistency are maintained. “It all funnels through me because we’re trying to keep the integrity and protocol the same for all the chapters and new communities,” she says. Koner makes the contacts that result in matches between families and then helps them get started in adapting the protocol to their chapters. “The various chapter organizers and volunteer families become something of a family themselves,” says Koner. “It’s really sweet. They e-mail each other and essentially establish community amongst themselves.”

For the Pembroke families, Federal Express has contributed its shipping services, which allows more money to be spent on food. For chapters that may not be supported with free shipping, Koner has envisioned a new “two-family-for-one” way of organizing that will keep shipping costs from depleting the food budgets. “Five have-not families would be adopted by 10 have families. They rotate so that one month, one family purchases the food for the package and the other family pays for the shipping, and the next month, they switch.”

In terms of support, F2F, says Koner, “is trying to think outside the normal box.” It doesn’t seek donations of food, only financial support for transportation in the communities and to keep the organizational operation intact. Apart from funding that would allow Koner to continue to work full-time or hire someone to help her, the program looks to its participants to provide what is needed. For everything else, she says—the food, in particular—people are generous of themselves and their resources. Every month, she says, they have drives for items such as clothing, linens, and over-the-counter medications. Everyone benefits, she suggests, by being giving without looking to outside sources. “It can be so impactful,” Koner says, “when people really act out of a wanting to do it.” With F2F, she explains, “there’s a concrete sense of one family becoming involved with another family in the United States. It’s very profound for participants.”

EXPANSION
Koner plans to develop a cyber-community concept for her program, starting with cyberchapters that let people all over the country participate. “Lots of people wanted to be involved, but they live in locations without chapters and don’t necessarily want to start a chapter themselves.” She’s developing the protocols for cyberchapters and envisions a great deal of interest in Internet-based activity.

F2F’s mission doesn’t end with feeding the hunger; it also seeks to feed minds. “We’re looking for an adult literacy program to join forces with us so we can come into a community, help feed the bodies, and then try to upgrade the level of literacy among the adults in the community,” says Koner. She adds that F2F boosts literacy in children as well: “We send a lot of children’s books, and one of our goals is to set up a mini-children’s library in each of the communities.”

The program also fosters communication to create community. The have-not families are asked to write to the have families to strengthen the link and also to communicate their needs. “There’s a motivation to communicate and ask for things,” explains Koner. “We ask our families what they need.” Then, the adopting families attempt to fulfill the needs. For example, she recalls, a woman wrote to say she’d been saving for a coat but had to use the money when her daughter was hospitalized. Another family was in need of a computer for their high school-age daughter. The adoptive community members then keep their eyes open for these items that might help their adopted families.

Similarly, Koner is concerned with developing and providing resources that will help communities in need help themselves. One strategy is to come up with a 16-passenger van for each low-income community the program works in. “One of the problems with getting people out in these communities is transportation,” she says. “People are eager to go to work, but in these very rural communities, there’s nowhere nearby to work.” Her hope is to find car manufacturers or rental car services that would join the program and donate 16-passenger vans to these communities, which would create jobs and allow people to get to jobs. Drivers would be required to get people to and from work, and the working people could pay a fare for each ride.

A ROLE FOR DIETITIANS
Although there are no registered dietitians involved in F2F at this time, Koner welcomes their participation and says that there are a number of roles they may play in addition to organizing chapters or providing financial support. “It’s really critical that we stay under a certain amount of money when preparing the weekly packages for each family. Generally, donating families are spending $30 to $35,” which, she laments, “buys very little, even when they’re purchasing generic foods.”

The program would be eager for strategies RDs might provide to maximize the nutritional return on the donating families’ purchasing dollars. Ideas for meals made from foods that can be purchased inexpensively in large quantities would significantly increase the program’s ability to feed more people for the $30 to $35 monthly payment. In addition, dietitians might offer suggestions for meal planning and help create shopping lists for special populations—for example, older adults or individuals with special dietary conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. Dietitians who can help the families make more with less while providing nutritional guidance will contribute greatly to the program’s mission.

THE REWARDS
F2F brings obvious rewards to its families in need. Its secondary benefits are less tangible. Koner, who has no strong religious beliefs, has been surprised by the spiritual side of creating community. “I’ve discovered a whole new and interesting part of myself in the spiritual aspect of doing something good and feeling the real worth of it,” she says. “The people who have been drawn to it are very faithful.” Still, she’s humble about this powerful movement she’s created. “I had an idea—it just happened to be an easy and replicable one—and people are hungry to do it.”

— Kate Jackson is a staff writer for Today’s Dietitian.

For more information, visit www.family-to-family.com.

Subscribe to Today's Dietitian Magazine!