December 2006 Update

It is already halfway through the month and I am just getting around to posting my December blog. That’s pretty normal for this time of year. The Food Bank runs all operations on a calendar year so along with the Holidays, we have a new set of Board Members to orient on their responsibilities, establishment of goals for the coming year and development of a budget that will support the goals. At the same time, we have a number of organizations who invite us to functions to present donation checks as well as TV and radio interviews to talk about how things are during the holiday season. In short, it is just plain busy.

Of course 2006 is a lot quieter than 2004 (post Ivan) and 2005 (post Katrina) but sadly, there remains a lot of support to be done for the thousands still out of their homes on the Gulf Coast and those in their homes but facing cost increases at a pace much more rapid than wage increases. We still end November of this year with over 1 million pounds of food distributed for the month. I’ve got some of the staff reviewing the costs of maintaining a young family in Pensacola, Foley, Mobile, Gulfport and some of the smaller rural communities to try and capture information on when a family stops struggling to make ends meet. It certainly is not when eligibility for Food Stamps ends. We intend to focus on that next year to help us better understand and inform the organizations we work with some all of us can help more.

We have also been busy focusing on future disasters. Dave Krepcho of the Orlando Food Bank, Mike Manning of the Baton Rouge Food Bank and 10 other food banks across the nation are working on a new disaster manual with America’s Second Harvest- The Nation’s Food Bank Network staff members. We have now met three times and conducted numerous teleconferences as part of an effort to gain from recent disaster recovery experience in planning for future relief work. All of the Food Bank representatives have supported relief operations in the past ranging from hurricanes to floods to fires and we’re trying to create a flexible plan that rapidly supports an area without cumbersome rules. Traveling to Chicago for 12 hours of meetings and then back home is not a lot of fun, but I think it helps us stay focused on the effort and interested in doing a good job.

That’s it for now, I hope all of you have a chance to be with family and enjoy the Christmas holiday before it is time to get back in the swing of things for 2007!