CDC’s Hard Work Pays Off for Hungry : A Little Foresight and a Lot of Sweat Make Difference

It’s hard to imagine what 4.5 million pounds of food valued at $3.3 million means in human terms. But it takes only a little imagination to grasp what a huge difference a new food program being launched in mid-May will mean to Orange County mothers, infants and children who live in poverty.

For those who qualify for the program, there will be monthly boxes filled with an assortment of canned fruits and vegetables, rice, cheese, cereal, nonfat dry milk, egg mix, peanut butter and other food items--also infant formula, if needed. The cost of an average 40-pound food box, if purchased at the grocery store, is estimated at $56.

About 60,000 of these food boxes a year will be distributed through a federal program being coordinated by the Community Development Council, a private, nonprofit organization that serves as Orange County’s official anti-poverty agency.

The program will supplement the current federal Women, Infant and Children feeding program, which had experienced severe budget cutbacks in recent years. WIC, which is administered by the county, recently was able to increase slightly its services, but it still can provide food and infant formula to fewer than a third of the 63,000 women and children who are eligible. The Community Supplemental Food Program will go a long way toward filling that gap.

Support for bringing this program to Orange County came from many community agencies, including United Way, the Interfaith Hunger Coalition, the Salvation Army and the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force, as well as many civic leaders.

But credit must be given to the Community Development Council and, in particular, its food bank manager, Mark Lowry, who pursued aggressively the possibility that Orange County could become only the second federal Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) in the state. (The other is in San Francisco.)

The council was discouraged at every turn but nevertheless put together a proposal that included detailed plans for warehousing, distribution and eligibility determination. It also identified funds to pay for services not provided by the federal government. According to the state Department of Education, which administers the program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the proposal was “persuasive.” But still there was no money available to fund it.

Sometimes, however, hard work makes its own luck, and such was the case with the council’s proposal. When, suddenly, the money was there for a new program, the USDA had Orange County’s proposal on the desk. It thus became the first California organization since the 1970s to gain approval.

Unlike WIC, which issues vouchers for food that can be used in grocery stores, CSFP involves direct distribution of food boxes. That will be an awesome task that will require strong community backing from groups and volunteers. The Community Development Council is now putting together these services, and all helping hands are welcome.

But to give an idea of the immense amount of food that will be distributed, it will take 132 semi-truck loads to get all of it to Orange County and 35,000 square feet of warehouse space to store it. Five or six trucks a day are now arriving to stock shelves in preparation for opening day.

Daunting as this challenge is, it is well worth the effort. Because of the council’s foresight and effort, thousands of Orange County mothers and their children will receive high-nutrition packages every month.