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.
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