The Sad Truth about the Food Bank - Please read and share (San Antonio, TX)

This is not some BS, exaggerated story that I made up to get attention. This is the real, factual, pathetic truth about the San Antonio Food Bank.

We've all seen or heard the ads, we've received the mailers, maybe some of us have even donated to them or needed their help. Well, I played the part of a starving family, first hand, and discovered the sickening truth about the Food Bank system.

When you donate food or money to the Food Bank, or when you drop off canned goods at a local Food Bank food drive, you are doing so with the expectation that food is going to REALLY help area families from going hungry. If you have ever donated to the Food Bank, you really have to read this entire article. To call it eye opening is an understatement and what I will reveal in a bit is absolutely disgusting.

People request assistance from the Food Bank for many reasons. But the bottom line is money. People need food from the Food Bank because they are broke and have no other way to pay for food for their families. Many times an unforeseen emergency causes this. And sometimes these emergencies last for an extended period of time.

When someone calls the Food Bank for food assistance, they are directed to a local "food pantry" in their area, that is, if you call them during normal business hours. Apparently people don't go hungry on nights or weekends and I don't know the directory extension for "MY FAMILY IS STARVING!"

Here's how it goes,

You call the Food Bank, give them your zip code, and they give you the number of a local food pantry. You have to call the food pantry and make an appointment to apply for your food. Nope, no food yet. Then you get the soonest appointment possible (sometimes a week later), meanwhile you and your family continue suffering. Did I mention this is the procedure for "emergency food assistance."

Then you arrive at your appointment and fill out up to four pages of forms, front and back, with necessary questions like, "How long do you anticipate this financial crisis to last?" or "How many people are in your household?" and humiliating questions like, "What are you going to do today to prevent this from happening in the future?" and "Describe in detail, exactly how you got to this point." I'm sure that the person filling this form out really wants to sit there and describe in detail the problems that probably make them want to blow their head off. All the while you can't stop staring at the walls full of hundreds of canned goods, boxed food items, cereals, fruits, vegetables, and more.

Then you provide your driver's license and social security card. Don't have your social security card? That's ok, you can (must) fax it to them later. Have a wife and kids? You'll need their social security cards too. I bet you're really hungry. I bet your two kids are crying right about now because they had no idea they would have to sit for another two hours through hunger pains. Do you routinely carry your electric bill around with you? Then you're in luck, cause they'll need that too.

I should point out that if you don't have any of the above forms of ID, you can still get some food (eventually), but if you don't fax them copies of those ID's and bills, you will be blacklisted and unable to receive any additional help in the future. And by future I mean FUTURE. More on that in a bit.

So here you are, about two hours after you and your starving family arrived at the food pantry. You've filled out the ridiculous forms, answered the questions, and promised to fax those other items to them. Remember that question about how long you expect this food crisis to last and how many people are in your household? Why do they ask those questions? I'm no genius but I figured they used them to gauge how much food to give. Apparently not. So your family of four is going to have zero funds and thus zero ability to purchase food for two weeks. They hand you four small plastic shopping bags with a few canned goods, a box of Kudo's, spoiled peaches, moldy bagels, and some Slim Jims. The entire contents of the bags were twelve small items.

But this is not the saddest fact about the Food Bank system. The most pathetic and unbelievably shocking fact is why they really need all of those ID's, social security cards, and electric bills. Tracking. A household can only receive food **ONCE PER YEAR** from the Food Bank food pantries. For my sample case though, luckily the particular food pantry I went to is different. Their policy allows starving families to receive food twice per year. I guess they expected my family to cut those Slim Jims into 182 individual pieces, and eat those green beans one at a time cut into tiny pieces.

Let me repeat this. Starving families who call the Food Bank to receive food are sent to a food pantry where they fill out ridiculous forms, jump through hoops, receive a small amount of barely edible, and in some cases, not edible food, and then that's it. They have used their one time Food Bank ticket for the year. No more Food Bank help till the next year. So when that family of four runs out of those Slim Jims and green beans, and they are hungry yet again, hopefully they can find some food in a garbage can or beg for some money in the streets, because the Food Bank has done their job.

While typing this, I just thought about how much I wish this were a comedy article. I wish what I was typing here were some kind of prank, joke, or piece of literary fiction. It's not. It's the unfortunate truth about that place we all hear so much about but had no clue how it really worked, the Food Bank.

PLEASE ask these news stations to report on how the Food Bank really works.

WOAI News 4: newsdesk@woaitv.com

KSAT News 12: This is their contact form link,

http://www.ksat.com/contact/index.html

KENS News 5: citydesk@express-news.com.

I kindly ask that you contact these news stations, no matter where you live, and ask them to investigate and report on this. Please.

Notes:

I can only speak about the local Food Bank here in San Antonio. I have no idea if this is the case nationwide, but maybe we should find out.

I am in no way saying that the Food Bank is worthless. I am trying to open people's eyes to how they actually help the hungry and hopefully start a call for change and greater community support of area hunger programs.

I was there for over two hours and I was the only person there besides workers. That and the facts that I saw plenty of food and that any of the food is moldy says quite a bit as well.