Food Share Joins Effort to Chronicle Hunger in U.S.

Although Ventura County’s main industry is growing food, it is not immune to the nation’s growing hunger problem, officials say.

Now Food Share in Oxnard, the county’s largest food bank, is joining in a nationwide hunger survey that officials say will give them a better understanding of how extensive the problem is here.

The study by Second Harvest National Food Bank Network will provide statistical information, for the first time, on those segments of the county population who most often require food assistance, said Food Share Director Jim Mangis.

Through one-on-one interviews conducted by volunteers and students, the survey will identify people who frequent local food pantries by age, sex, ethnicity, economic condition and area of residence, he said.

“We have to put a face on hunger,” Mangis said of the local survey effort that began in February. “We have to understand what is going on in our community, who is coming to our food pantries and whether we are doing a good job and how can we do it better.”

Currently, Food Share serves about 33,000 people a month with 300,000 meals through a network of local church pantries, homeless shelters, seniors programs and homes for abused women and children, Mangis said.

With California and the rest of the nation on the verge of major cutbacks in welfare services, the number of county residents needing food assistance is expected to grow at an accelerated rate, he said.

“Our fear is that we’ll have a big headline that says welfare rolls drop by 20%,” Mangis said. “But what you won’t hear is that 10% of those people are still in desperate need and how the emergency food network is overwhelmed by it.”

With information from the hunger survey, Food Share will be in a better position to help attract additional food donations, financial assistance and volunteers to meet growing demands, officials said. It will also help the food bank deliver its services more efficiently and effectively.

As part of the survey, Food Share has already queried the operators of 188 food agencies around the county about their operations and the services they provide, Mangis said. In addition, volunteers and college students have been recruited to conduct interviews with visitors at 39 of the food agencies.

Ventura College student Patrick Biondo, 31, said he recently conducted interviews with six homeless people on Ventura Avenue as part of a class project. He said the experience helped raise his own awareness about the problem of hunger and homelessness in his community.

“There are a lot of terrible things happening out there,” Biondo said. “A lot of the people I talked to were sick--and had not received any medical aid--due to hunger.”

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Hazel Beard, 78, a longtime Food Share volunteer, also conducted interviews for the survey. Beard said she was moved by the stories she heard from people living on the streets and forced to go without meals.

She said she was particularly touched by an interview with one woman who had been forced to live in a broken-down car for several months with her five children.

“There are some women out there who are willing to miss a meal so their kids can eat,” Beard said, her voice quivering with emotion.

The Second Harvest hunger survey will include 385 interviews with Ventura County residents and more than 30,000 people nationwide, officials said. The study will cover 1,180 of the nation’s 3,143 counties.

Food Share expects to get the results of the national survey as well as the local study in November, Mangis said.

Meanwhile, Food Share is set to begin construction today on a new walk-in refrigerator and freezer that will be housed in its new 8,500-square-foot warehouse in Oxnard. An increasing amount of food received by the food bank is either fresh or frozen and so the new refrigeration system is critical to its operations, officials said.