Rally dramatizes food bank's need for summer donations

Federal numbers show fewer Utahns are likely to live in poverty, but more residents are hungry or at risk of hunger than the national average.

With that in mind, advocates, a state lawmaker, corporate volunteers and leaders of the Coalition of Religious Communities staged a rally Tuesday in conjunction with National Hunger Awareness Day.

The hope was to counter the lull of the summertime food-collection season, which typically has fewer people mindful of the year-round need to fill the shelves of the Utah Food Bank.

Amberlie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the event, said the summer months see supplies of food for the low-income, elderly and people with disabilities dwindle to dangerously low levels.

"Of course, everybody thinks about it during the holidays, and in April and May we have the Boy Scouts' food drive and the drive by letter carriers," Phillips said. "After that, it is nothing."

The event marked the official kickoff of the Utah Food Bank's Summer Business Food Drive, during which nearly 200,000 pounds of food were collected last year.

Over the next several months, Phillips said the goal is to stock the pantry with 250,000 pounds of food.

Albertsons grocery became one of the first corporate partners to jump into the act, handing over a $10,000 check for the cause and enlisting the volunteer help of dozens of employees to sort food during the rally.

The local observation of the national hunger awareness initiative included a call to action urging Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, to throw his support behind the Hunger Free Communities Act that is before Congress.

More than 30 religious leaders from throughout Utah urged Bennett, as chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, to co-sponsor the legislation, which calls on political leaders to cut hunger and food insecurity in the United States in half by 2010.

"In a country of great resources, thousands of citizens go to bed hungry," said the Rev. Bonnie Joia Roddy of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City. "Utah ranks among the top 10 hungriest places in the country."

The act, with its call to reduce hunger, establishes a grant program that would increase the local resources available to community organizations dedicated to feeding the needy and authorizes the collection of more data to guide public policy makers.

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E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com