Dinner for Six

I recently saw a great story about a family who wanted to spend more quality together and chose to do so by putting together food bags for kids who are hungry. It's called Kids Against Hunger.

The bags have a combination of rice, crushed soy, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins/flavoring "secret sauce" powder. When boiled up it will feed six children.

A 32-pound box contains 36 packets that make a total of 216 meals and costs approximately $50.

So here is how to make this a budget philanthropy project:

Make dinner and invite five of your friends over. Tell 'em to bring ten bucks each.  You feed them one meal, they feed six kids 36 times.

Do it once a month and that's almost 2,600 meals that you and your friends have provided hungry kids.  It only costs you ten bucks a month.

The Fifth Meal

We have a way of feeding people that doesn't involve taking food to the foodbank.  We love donating to the foodbank and do it occasionally, but in this economy as self-employed people there is not a lot of excess grocery money to go around at our house.

So, here is what we do instead.

When we make our normal evening meal we try to make enough that we can create what's called "The Fifth Meal" (we're a family of four).  We package it up in a cool food saver tray that has compartments and a lid and voila... a whole meal we can share with someone.

Typically we share these with seniors because they are lighter eaters.  It might be 2-3 ounces of a meat main dish and a serving spoon full of veggies and another bit of side-dish.  It's not a grand meal, but it's solid and great for people on a fixed income.  We get to know people around us who are on a fixed income and find it's a real treat for them to have their lunch brought to them the next day or to have a big hunk sliced off the end of the banana bread or whatever.

Little things like that can help your neighbor feel cared for and break up their ordinary food routine.

Don't let your leftovers sit in the fridge and go bad -- create a Fifth Meal and share it with someone who could use something to eat.

Photo by: Stephen Depolo

Kellogg Feeds America

I ran across a site where you can donate $5 for free. Sort of.

At the Kellogg web site if you donate $5 for the Feeding America program, Kellogg will give you back $5 in coupons. Effectively, that means you've made your donation for free!

So, go check it out and help Kellogg feed America!

Share the Comfort

Click to donate 10 boxes of Kraft macaroni. Totally free. Help them meet their goal of one million boxes!

www.sharealittlecomfort.com

The Lemon Lady

Hanna Rion said, "The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses."

I think The Lemon Lady would disagree. Probably she would say the greatest gift of the garden is that it enables you to give generously to others.

Anna's basic philosophy is simple. First, it's the strong belief that no one should go hungry (and we can all agree to that) and second, why not plant an extra row in your garden for hungry people and then take all that produce to a local food bank?

I'm not sure how it is in larger areas, but in my rural area the food banks don't keep fresh foods -- just boxed, bottled, jarred and canned. Summer is a great time when the bounty of our gardens are overflowing -- this is a time when it's easy to be generous.

Are you keeping a garden this year? Why not start by planting a row for the hungry. Then go check out Anna's blog and see how far you can take it. Can you top her 4,500 pounds of harvested produce for the hungry? Can you try? Because just trying means you're doing more than if you did nothing.

What about starting a community garden in your town or neighborhood? What are the benefits there? Share the labor, share the love, share the bounty.

At our place we're doing "double duty". I wanted my kids to understand about how vegetables grow, where they come from, and how to take care of them. Combined with this we also learn how to save money by growing our own food, and how to share our "wealth" with others by giving extra produce to my mom and her friends who are on fixed incomes.

We're not saving the world, but we ARE making a difference. Do you have any grand plans for this fertile spring and summer?

Dine In to Fight Childhood Hunger

Stouffer's is running a great campaign to build awareness of childhood hunger. If you visit the site between now and the end of April, Stouffer's will donate $5 to Feeding America to provide meals for children and their families struggling with hunger.

All you have to do is pledge to have dinner at home with a group of family and friends and discuss hunger. They even have free tools to help you. You can download them from the site.

Easy, peasy! You have to eat dinner, so why not dine in with friends and talk about what you can do to help fight childhood hunger. Who knows, maybe you will come up with some brilliant plan. The absolute worst you'll do is get Stouffer's to raise an extra five bucks on your behalf and from there the sky's the limit!

Teens Fight Hunger in Arkansas

Here is a story from my neck of the woods. Imagine a group of teenagers who raise money to buy food for 400 families and give up their spring break to do it!

You can read the story at Channel 11 News.

The $1.39 Meal Challenge

Even before the economy began to get bad, there has been a significant poverty problem in America. Last year, 10% of Americans were considered below the poverty line (defined by the Census Bureau as making under $9,393 for an individual or $14,680 for a family of three). What would your life be like if you lived on less than $10,000 per year?

The USDA has put out their cost of food report for 2008. The foodstamp allotment for a family of four (the Thrifty Plan) is $500. This is what they say a family of four could expect to pay for food and actually live to tell about it. That's about $1.39 per meal for each person.

Have you every tried eating for $1.39? With the belt-tightening we've been doing around our house, we decided to try this as an experiment with some interesting results.

But I'd like to see what YOU manage to come up with. So, here is my challenge... try for a week or two to put your food budget at the amount allowable according to the USDA Cost of Food Chart on the Thrifty Plan. It goes by age and gender. Try it for your household and see what kind of experiences you have. It's a really fascinating change in perspective and gives you an entirely new way of looking at the world around you -- for better or for worse.

The only rules are that whatever menu plans you come up with MUST be nutritionally balanced and you have to do at least three meals per day.

Here is an added challenge if you can work this into your budget... whatever the difference is that you save while you're doing this challenge -- donate it to a local food bank. You'll feel great about the good you've done with your donation and the perspective you've gained from this experience will be priceless!

And don't forget to let me know how it goes!

[photo credit: TowerGirl]

Using Social Media for Change

Chris Brogan knows the power of social media. Today he used his powers for Good.

While on Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging tool, Chris "tweeted" to his 34,126 followers about the Share Our Strength project and asked that they "retweet" it to their followers. Share Our Strength's mission is to help wipe out hunger in children and they have partnered with AT&T to do a text-message fund raising drive ($5 pledge per message) with up to $100,000 in matching funds.

Today, Chris Brogan got the word out to 34,126 people plus all the people THOSE people know. If every one of those original people answers Chris's call to action, he would raise, in mere moments, $170,630. With AT&T's matching funds that amount would be $270,630. All it costs you and me is $5. My lunch costs more than $5.

Sometimes all it takes is one sentence to make a difference. How can YOU use the Internet for change? What cause can you help drive through the power of social media? Harness the power of your ENTER key.