The Child Who Traded Toys for Food

“Mr. Talley, no one should go hungry in America.”

It is a somewhat common statement to which I always reply, “No, but millions do.”

Some readers might be inclined to think, “Ah, but the needy have SNAP (the government’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). My tax dollars go for that, and that should be enough.”

To which I reply, “Have you ever tried to live on SNAP, to see how well that actually feeds your family?” (Hint: Try adequately feeding yourself on less than $10 a day. Your gut will tell you the answer.)

Every year, I see the hunger grow in our local community. I especially notice it each Christmastime, when I visit the needy dressed as Santa. This past year, I helped needy local families every bit as much (if not more) with food and rent as I did with gifts to their children. After all, how much of a joy are toys to a child when they are hungry and homeless?

(Exorbitant rent may well be a topic for another article in this newsletter. For now, I will deal with food. Families can exist and make do without a permanent place to live, as too many among us do. But families simply cannot live without enough food.)

The stark reality of all this hit the fan for me this past December when a little boy ran out the front door after me as I was leaving a home I had just visited. The child said to me, “Santa, can I trade my toys you brought me for some food?”

I have never, in all my twenty years of Santa deliveries to local families, had those words spoken to me by a child.

Which reminds me, I actually had a friend say to me, “Our church sends all our food relief efforts to overseas missions. Because we know that any family in America can get all the food they need, if they really want it.”

Hmmm…..maybe my friend should go visit this child and his family.

The harsh reality is this; too many families go hungry right here in America, the “land of plenty”.

As we know in this life, there is no easy solution to difficult problems.

I have personally taken to providing Food City gift cards to families and individuals in need. (In my visits around Bristol I’ve also discovered that the elderly living on fixed incomes too often go undernourished.)

But hungry people do not need food at Christmastime only. Families need to feed their children every day, all year long.

There actually already exists enough food in our region to adequately feed every hungry soul in our communities. Every local grocery store is filled with food. We just need to get it to those who are most direly in need.

Some may think the large economic “cost” to feed the hungry among us is too much. On the contrary, the cost (and I’m not even talking about “cost” in humanitarian terms here - but purely economic) is far greater.

For even if someone doesn’t personally care about the poor … and even if someone somehow thinks that for some reason the needy “deserve” their poverty, there yet remains an especially big “economic” reason we, as an entire community, would want to feed the needy: Because it costs us (again, speaking solely in economic terms), as a society, far more NOT to feed the hungry because of the following fact:

A hungry child cannot focus in school and is, therefore, much more unlikely to ever become an economically contributing member to our society (a taxpayer with meaningful employment). Therefore, in the “big picture”, the vast economic cost to society of ignoring child hunger is far more than the price of providing adequate food at present.

Of course, one cannot combat such a huge problem by oneself. It takes a village. Therefore, I’d like to highlight one local agency who is at the forefront of trying to provide enough food, every day of the year, for the hungry in our region.

That would be none other than Second Harvest Food Bank.

My cousin, Kristen Fields-Reedy, is a brilliant and good soul. A former public school teacher and principal, Kristen now works for Second Harvest Food Bank in Sullivan County.

Kristen recently took me on a personally guided tour of the local Second Harvest Food Bank facility. Below is a pic taken by yours truly during my tour.

Here is a link to local the Second Harvest Food Bank website: https://netfoodbank.org/

My friends, if you know of any family or individual who is food challenged, please feel free to call Second Harvest at 423-279-0430. These good people will find some way to help.

Meantime, if you come across a little child wanting to trade their toys for food … please feed them.