That is the question that Shakespeare made famous more than 400 years ago and that we still hear often repeated today. There is something about a compelling question that grabs our attention and holds it. It demands an answer and that makes us think.
Here at NFESH we’d say that we are in the business of finding answers. Our What A Waste project and Reach4Solutions are excellent examples of that pursuit. We want to discover ways to help congregate nutrition programs lessen their food waste and wasted food so they can provide nutritious meals to more seniors who need them. We want to work with them to reduce senior hunger in their communities.
We talk a lot about data. We show programs how to separate and measure waste so we can analyze it and translate it into meals discarded, nutrients consumed and lost, dollars squandered. We engage esteemed independent academic researchers to count the number of seniors threatened by hunger in America each year.
We do it all in search of answers – answers to questions. One is “What Does the Face of Senior Hunger Look Like?” It is important. But it is also impossible to describe, because there is not one face of hunger and there never will be.
As we have worked across the United States and completed What A Waste projects in 72 congregate nutrition programs, we have realized that the more important question is: What do the faces of those seniors that congregate nutrition programs serve look like?
We have seen what they look like. We have met those wonderful seniors whose faces and stories and energy and gratitude have enriched our lives. Now, as we approach the end of this year and post our last blog of 2017, we want to share some of them with you. There are thousands more out there we’d like to meet in other congregate sites and still thousands more who would like to be served there but, for lack of resources, cannot. What do those faces look like? We’d like to make it possible to find out. And that is what our work is all about.
