Charity Begins at Home

For days, Southern California students have pilfered their pantries for cans of chicken noodle soup, chili and Spaghetti-Os. Now volunteers at dozens of local schools are arranging the bounty into holiday baskets destined for families that often can’t afford to buy food. This Christmas season, school principals say they’ve had a harder time than usual deciding which households are the hungriest, the most in need. Poverty in Southern California is that great.

The devastation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has rippled far beyond New York City and Washington, D.C., exacerbating a recession that had already taken hold. In Los Angeles, a steep drop in tourism has combined with ongoing dot-com washouts and other corporate downsizing, marooning the families of fry cooks at LAX, hotel housekeepers and assembly-line workers. Thousands have neither paychecks nor prospects. According to a recent study by the county Department of Health Services, Los Angeles is now the hunger capital of the nation.

Americans are a generous people. The $1.3 billion donated to support the survivors and families affected by the terrorist atrocity of Sept. 11 attests to a nation of big hearts. Unfortunately, economic shockwaves have reached charities at the precise moment more families than ever need help. A new survey of 400 nonprofit groups measures the result. Underwritten by a coalition of grant-making organizations called California Cares, the survey finds organizations that help needy families face a $25-million drop in donations statewide while 60% of those charities struggle with increasing demand for their services.

The hardest hit are those groups providing basic safety net services--food, shelter, counseling and health care. These organizations are bracing for an additional 750,000 to 1 million destitute Californians on their doorsteps this year. They include local agencies such as the Los Angeles Free Clinic, a mid-city institution since 1967--the only place many poor people will find a doctor to treat them. The Foothill Family Service in Pasadena, which provides counseling for families, teenagers and seniors in crisis, and the St. Joseph Center in Venice, which feeds 800 impoverished families a year while providing job training, will be in particular demand.

These and many other local charities want you to remember those who need help here, as well as in New York, during a holiday season when canned food baskets won’t begin to do the job.

*

To Take Action: For more information on how you can help or to make a donation, contact the United Way of Greater Los Angeles at (213) 630-2371 or www.unitedwayla.org or the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank at (323) 234-3030 or www.lafightshunger.org.