Food & Nutrition [Volume 12, Number 4]

              October 1982 Volume 12 Number 4
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solutions to problems. In this issue, we
highlight some of the ways public and
private groups are working together on food
assistance and nutrition education. We also
Building Partnerships
"What we're asking you to do is help rediscover America -
not the America bound by the Potomac River but the America
beyond it. The America whose initiative, ingenuity and industry
have made our country the envy of the world. The America
whose rich tradition of generosity began with simple acts of
neighbor caring for neighbor." - President Ronald Reagan
rl:' rom the earliest harvest-sharing between native American and
Pilgrim to the latest fund-raising tele­thon
for medical research, Ameri­cans
in their private lives and
through their private institutions
have built a unique tradition of part­nership
in meeting their common
needs.
This tradition of private initiative
in the public's service is stronger to­day
than ever before.
• More than 55 million Americans
volunteered for community service
in 1981, and more than half these
citizens devoted at least 5 hours a
week to volunteer programs.
• More than 425,000 private
organizations are providing public
services in job training and place­ment,
health care, transportation,
education, housing, nutrition, senior
and youth activities, legal and con­sumer
advice, and many other
community enterprises.
• Together, these private initia­tives
in community service consti­tute
a $150 billion annual enterprise,
exceeding the combined 1982
budgets of eight cabinet depart­ments
of the U.S. government.
Such private initiative is needed
now more than ever. To help en­courage
increased private contribu­tions
of both human and financial
resources to the progress of Ameri­ca's
communities, last December
2
President Reagan commissioned a
bi-partisan Task Force on Private
Sector Initiatives. Its 44 members
include leading representatives from
industry, business, state and local
governments, the academic com­munity,
Congress, and religious, civ­ic,
and philanthropic organizations.
The Task Force shares the Presi­dent's
view that while much good
work is already being done through
public-private partnerships and vol­untary
activity, much more can be
accomplished through better organ­ization
and coordination.
Part of the mission of the Presi­dent's
Task Force is to bring to the
nation's attention successful exam­ples
of private initiatives and com­munity
partnerships. These exam­ples
will serve as models to be
adapted in other communities facing
similiar challenges.
• In New York City, a partnership
of civic and business leaders creat­ed
10,000 private sector jobs for a
summer youth program in 1981.
• In Fort Lauderdale, the City
Housing Authority and a major insur­ance
company turned a run-down
apartment complex into a show­place
residential community for sen­ior
citizens.
• In Minneapolis, a large corpora­tion
transformed an abandoned in­ner-
city bowling alley into a profit­making
binding plant employing the
"unemployable."
• In Green Valley, Arizona, a
13,500-strong "community of volun­teers"
(mostly 65 or over) provides
its own fire protection, water serv­ice,
emergency radio communica­tion,
health clinic, and other
services.
'16 strengthen the role of the I private sector in community serv­ice,
the task Force has been work­ing
to:
• Identify and eliminate impedi­ments
to private initiatives.
• Explore and improve the incen­tives
used to encourage private
initiatives.
• Recommend strategies for more
effective contributions of time, tal­ent,
and money for community en­terprise
by businesses, foundations,
religious and civic groups, and others.
• Create a computerized project
bank to collect and share informa­tion
on community partnerships and
creative solutions undertaken by
private sector groups.
In support of the work of the Presi­dent's
Task Force, USDA's Food
and Nutrition Service is devoting
this issue of Food and Nutrition
magazine to private sector initiatives
and public-private partnerships in
the areas of food assistance and nu­trition
education.
On the following pages are exam­ples
from all over the country of
ways people are working to help
meet the particular food needs of
their communities. At a time of lim­ited
public resources at all levels of
government-federal, state, and lo­cal-
the examples show that creative
partnerships between the public and
private sectors can result in some·
imaginative solutions to problems.
This past summer, a representa­tive
from the President's Task Force
visited the Food and Nutrition Serv­ice
and made a presentation to the
agency's senior staff. Among the
materials distributed at the meeting
was a kit, Building Partnerships,
complete with more information on
the activities of the Task Force and a
checklist for action at the local level.
For further information, contact:
Carolyn Tieger
Director of Communications
The President's Task Force
on Private Sector Initiatives
734 Jackson Place, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Telephone: (202) 395-7362
The President's Task Force is com­missioned
through December 1982.
Food and Nutrition
When it comes to spending
their food dollars, people
want to get the most nutri­tional
value for the least amount of
money. But knowing how to do that
isn't always easy.
During the past 10 or 15 years, the
country's interest in nutrition has
grown by leaps and bounds. Many
schools now teach nutrition as part
of their health and science classes.
Newspapers and magazines feature
columns on food and diet. People of
all ages are thinking and talking
about what they eat and how it af­fects
their lives.
As this interest has grown, so has
the demand for information materi­als-
and the need to find cost-effec­tive
ways to provide them. Many gov­ernment
and private groups are find­ing
they can help each other in the
shared goal of getting nutrition in­formation
to the public.
The Red Cross and the Depart­ment
of Agriculture, for example,
are collaborating on a course for the
family food buyer that will eventual-ly
be taught through local Red
Cross chapters throughout the
country. USDA is helping draft
course materials and design the
tools to evaluate them. The Red
Cross is funding the project, con­densing
the materials, and conduct­ing
extensive field tests.
Another cooperative effort is a
Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
campaign being carried out by a
coalition of private organizations
and government agencies. The pur­pose
of the campaign is to increase
public awareness of the importance
of nutrition and good health during
pregnancy. A major goal is to
reduce the already declining rate of
infant mortality, and reaching low­income
mothers and pregnant
teenagers is a high priority.
Both of these collaborative efforts
illustrate ways people with different
skills, perspectives, and needs can
work together on nutrition educa­tion.
Here are more details on these
and other projects, along with in­formation
on how to take part:
Public and private groups
work on nutrition education
Red Cross
Nutrition Course
The Red Cross hopes to have its
nutrition course ready for all inter­ested
chapters to use by the fall of
1983. The course, which will prob­ably
consist of six 2-hour sessions,
stresses that informed food choices
will contribute to good health.
The course will touch on a variety
of topics, including: food composi­tion,
safety, and additives; nutrition
guidelines; weight control and phys­ical
fitness; vitamin and mineral
supplementation; and menu plan­ning
for different age groups.
Participants will take a close look
at their own food habits and rate
their diets for variety. They will be
given ideas for trying new foods,
S!=!asonings, and cooking methods to
expand their horizons and increase
their awareness of good nutrition.
The idea for the course was born
in the Pittsburgh chapter, whose
planning committee decided to pro-
October 1982
pose a nutrition education project at
the 1979 national convention. "We
felt so much of people's money was
going for the wrong kind of food,"
says June Magdsick, who heads the
chapter's planning group.
"We felt this was something that
needed to be addressed nationally.
Some of the courses the Red Cross
was teaching, and still is, include
sections on food, nutrition, and eat­ing
habits, but nothing has been ad­dressed
specifically to nutrition in
itself," she adds.
The first session of the course will
include a film, called "Table Talk,"
which focuses on messages about
food-where we get messages and
how they affect what we eat. In one
scene at a dinner table, for example,
a father passes up broccoli because
he is a "meat and potatoes" person ,
and his little son decides he, too,
will not eat broccoli.
"The film sets the stage for partic­ipants
to begin looking at them­selves
and where they are nutrition­ally,"
says Mary Ann Hankin,
national director of health education
for Red Cross nursing and health
services.
The Red Cross filmed "Table
Talk" in Virginia using professional
actors and actresses. Other mate­rials
developed for the course will
include a guide to train the instruc­tor,
an instructor's guide for class­room
use, a workbook for partici­pants,
and self-study sheets for
additional reading. The materials
were written by USDA nutritionists
and nutritionists from Virginia Poly­technic
and State University, which
has been helping USDA with the
project.
According to USDA nutritionist
Anne Shaw, the nutrition course is
something of a first for both USDA
and the Red Cross. "While the Red
Cross frequently works with other
voluntary and professional groups in
developing courses, this is the first
time USDA has helped them build a
course from the ground up," she
explains.
"Another thing that's unique about
this course is that we've planned an
extensive evaluation both during its
formativ!3 stages and after it's in the
field. This was an important part of
the planning, and we hope it will
give the Red Cross a model to eval­uate
the other courses they're de­signing.
They periodically build a
new course as the need arises-they
have a new parenting course out, for
instance."
This summer the Red Cross did a
series of pilot tests. Among the sites
were: Roanoke, Virginia; Portland,
Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Wash­ington,
D.C., and nearby Prince
Georges County, Maryland. In the
first test, the Red Cross trained in­structors.
In the other two, they
taught community courses, evaluat­ing
them by testing what people ·
learned.
As with other Red Cross efforts,
volunteers have a crucial role. The
current project director at national
headquarters, nutritionist Bobbi
Clarke, started on the project as a
volunteer. She learned of it while do­ing
graduate work at Virginia Poly­technic
and State University.
Many if not most of the course in­structors
in the field will also be vol-
3
unteers, possibly including regist­ered
nurses, county extension nutri­tionists,
home economists, and oth­er
health professionals.
Late this fall the Red Cross will
make prototypes of course materials
available for chapters to use in a na­tional
field test. The materials will be
published in final form in the fall of
*19 83. For more information, write:
Bobbi Clarke
Nutrition Project Director
Nursing and Health Services
American Red Cross
17th and D Streets, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Telephone: (202) 737-8300
Healthy Mothers,
Healthy Babies
Just over a year ago, in Sep­tember
1981, people from 36 nation­al
voluntary, professional, and gov­ernment
organizations met to
discuss ways they could work to­gether
to improve maternal and in­fant
health. They decided to form a
coalition of organizations sharing a
common interest in promoting pub­lic
education for pregnant women
and their families.
Today, more than 50 private and
public groups belong to the coali­tion
and others continue to join.
Among them are: the March of
Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the
American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists, the American
Academy of Pediatrics, the Ameri­can
Nurses Association, the Parent­Teachers
Association, the Depart­ment
of Health and Human Services
(DHHS), and the Department of
Agriculture.
4
A major function of the coalition is
to share information about existing
educational materials and programs,
and, where possible, to produce new
materials cooperatively. Members
also seek opportunities to cooperate
in getting the materials to specific
target audiences, particularly to
women who are especially at risk
because of low income, medical or
genetic problems, or age (teenagers
and women over 35).
"It's an interesting coalition," says
nutritionist Pat Kearney, USDA's
liaison to the campaign. "Instead of
contributing dues, members con­tribute
in-kind services. For exam­ple,
the American College of Obste­tricians
and Gynecologists is
underwriting the cost of printing
limited copies of a newsletter. All of
the members get one or two copies,
and if they want to distribute the
newsletter to more people, they
print additional copies themselves.
"The whole point," she adds, "is to
get together people who have well­established
networks through which
they disseminate information-like
the March of Dimes and the Ameri­can
Red Cross. They have a chance
to see what materials are available,
decide if they would be useful to
their own organizations, and dissem­inate
them through their own
channels."
The Healthy Mothers, Healthy
Babies newsletter, published quar­terly,
is the main vehicle for
members to exchange news and in­formation.
The newsletter lists mate­rials
members can make available
free or at cost; it also lists materials
members wish to develop with help
from other coalition members.
There has already been some in­teresting
collaboration among
members. For example, the March of
Dimes and the Public Health Service
have jointly produced a series of ra-dio
spots that give advice on a varie­ty
of topics important to good health
during pregnancy. The spots, nar­rated
by Surgeon General Dr. C.
Everett Koop, are being distributed
to radio stations across the country
by local chapters of the March of
Dimes.
With help from several private
groups, the Public Health Service is
producing a series of posters, with
accompanying take-home materials,
for clinics that serve low-income
mothers. Gerber Foods has agreed
to underwrite the cost of printing
and distributing a poster on nutri­tion;
the American College of Obste­tricians
and Gynecologists is spon­soring
one on breastfeeding; and
the Beverage Alcohol Information
Council is sponsoring another on
alcohol.
A few coalition members have
prepared lists of educational mate­rials.
The Public Health Service
(PHS) has put together a directory
of educational materials on prenatal
and infant care. The directory lists
between 400 and 500 printed and
audiovisual materials produced by
voluntary, professional, and govern­ment
organizations. To complement
the directory the Public Health Ser­vice
has also prepared a brief bibli­ography
of 32 publications and films
produced by various PHS agencies.
In addition, USDA's Food and Nu­trition
Information Center (FNIC)
has assembled a resource guide of
materials on prenatal, infant, and
child nutrition. The guide lists more
than 300 pamphlets, books, and audi­ovisual
materials selected or devel­oped
by nutritionists for use in the
Special Supplemental Food Pro­gram
for Women, Infants, and Chil­dren
(WIC) and the Commodity
Supplemental Food Program
(CSFP).
Food and Nutrition
USDA is working on or has
planned a number of other activities
to support the Healthy Mothers,
Healthy Babies campaign.
Together with the March of Dimes
and the Department of Health and
Human Services, the Department
has produced a resource packet for
people who work with pregnant teen­agers.
The packet, Reaching Out to
the Pregnant Teenager, is designed
to help educators, health care pro­viders,
and food program managers
tailor their nutrition education serv­ices
to the needs, interests, and life­styles
of teenagers.
The packet includes: a guide for
nutrition educators, with sample les­son
plans; two display posters; and
a teaching poster illustrating how a
baby grows.
In a special mailing last fall, USDA
distributed 8,000 copies of the
packet to state agencies operating
the WIC and CSF Programs. Some
2,000 other copies went to the
Cooperative Extension Service, var­ious
DHHS programs, and by re­quest
to hospitals and universities.
Agencies getting the packet also re­ceived
as part of a separate distribu­tion
copies of a nutrition booklet for
pregnant teenagers produced inde­pendently
by DHHS. They also re­ceived
five March of Dimes pam­phlets
on nutrition and the effects of
alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs dur­ing
pregnancy.
Because of continuing interest in
the Reaching Out to the Pregnant
Teenager packet, the March of
Dimes has reprinted 5,000 more
copies, borrowing from USDA dupli­cates
of the materials used in the
original printing. The organization
will also be contributing some of its
own materials to the packet as it did
*la st fall. For information on how to obtain
the Reaching Out to the Pregnant
Teenager packet, write:
Nancy Crane
Nutrition and Technical Services
Division
Food and Nutrition Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Alexandria, Virginia 22302
Telephone: (703) 756-3555
October 1982
*For information on joining the
Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
coalition, write:
Elaine Bratic
Office of Public Affairs
U.S. Public Health Service
200 Independence Avenue S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
*Te lephone: (202) 245-6867 For copies of the coalition's news­letter,
write:
American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists
Department of Public Affairs
600 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20024
Telephone: (202) 638-5577
Video-Teleconference on
Maternal and Infant
Nutrition
®
®
In another collaborative effort,
USDA and DHHS are putting to­gether
a teleconference on maternal
and infant nutrition scheduled for
April 1983. It will consist of a satel­lite
television link-up between a
broadcast site in Washington, D.C.
and approximately 75 receiving lo­cations
in all 50 states.
The audience will include exten­sion
nutrition specialists, public
health nutritionists, doctors, nurses,
medical students, and others work­ing
in health and nutrition programs
for mothers and infants.
According to Anne Brown, one of
the USDA program coordinators,
the purpose of the teleconference is
to increase the audience's knowl­edge
of new research findings in nu­trition
as they relate to maternal and
infant health. "People in the au­dience
will be able to talk directly
to well-known experts," says
Brown, "and they'll have a chance to
hear about the latest research in the
field." Emphasis will be on the prac­tical
application of such research.
USDA and DHHS will share in
most aspects of the teleconference's
preparation. A task force with repre­sentatives
from each department
has been formed to plan and coor­dinate
the event. In addition, a work­ing
group will be formed in each
state to assist the federal task force
and participate in major planning
activities. State groups will help se­lect
topics, promote participation,
and make arrangements for local
viewing. State groups will be co­chaired
by an agriculture extension
representative and a public health
representative.
"We'll be working closely with the
states in the whole development of
the program," says Anne Brown,
"and we hope to have as broad and
active participation as we can.
"We hope state working groups
will encourage participation from a
variety of diverse interests, including
not only extension and public health
nutritionists, but also local members
of the American Dietetic Associa­tion,
the Society for Nutrition Edu­cation,
the American Red Cross, and
other interested groups."
The Thing the
Professor Forgot
One of the most popular of all
USDA nutrition publications was a
booklet for children called The
Thing the Professor Forgot. Origi­nally
produced in 1975 as a coopera­tive
venture with General Mills, the
booklet has been out of print for
more than a year.
Now, however, the booklet is once
again available-this time through
General Mills, which has reprinted
the booklet on its own and is offer­ing
it to the public for a nominal fee
to cover handling costs.
"It was a project we decided
needed doing," says Ivy Celender of
General Mills. "We have a strong
commitment to providing materials
to children."
The Thing the Professor Forgot is
a general introduction to the basic
food groups, stressing the import­ance
of eating a variety of good
foods. In it, a whimsical professor
leads children through the basic
food groups, each of which sounds
5
delicious enough to be their whole
diet. What the professor forgot, and
remembers at the end, is that it's
best to eat foods from all the basic
groups every day.
When it was first developed, the
booklet was written, designed, and
illustrated by General Mills, and ap­proved,
printed, and distributed by
USDA. In addition to contributing
staff time to write and illustrate the
booklet, General Mills also provided
$90,000 worth of free advertising
space. Information on the booklet
and how to obtain it from USDA ap­peared
on more than 40 million
cereal packages.
According to Ivy Calender, The
Thing the Professor Forgot was the
third in a series of publications
General Mills developed as joint proj­ects
with federal agencies. "We also
did one on drug abuse, callecf
Katie's Coloring Book, with the De­partment
of Justice," she says, "and
another on ecology with the De­partment
of Interior."
Before reprinting the nutrition
booklet this year, General Mills re­vised
it slightly to incorporate sug­gestions
from USDA. The original
writer, who lives in England, revi~ed
*th e text, which is all in verse. Copies are 50 cents each. To
order, write:
General Mills, Inc.
Nutrition Department
Department 45
Box 1112
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55440
Telephone: (612) 540-4328
6
Framingham, Massachusetts, news­paper
reprinted a USDA fact sheet
on storing, using, and serving Amer­ican
process cheese. The paper
printed the fact sheet the same week .Jr-- the community was distributing
(.::\USDA-donated cheese to the needy.
U Anyone may reprint or quote
from government publications with­out
permission. Government publi­cations
are not copyrighted and can
~,_~L.Jl."""..._ _ be reproduced in whole or in part,
with or without credit. Upon request,
the Department of Agriculture will
review the information in its publica­tions
to make sure it is the latest
available on the subject.
Here are a few guidelines:
1. The material should not be re­produced
in any way to imply en­dorsement
by the Department of any
commercial concern or product.
2. Although credit to the Depart­ment
is not required, it is helpful be­cause
it notifies the reader that the
In addition to large-scale efforts material is not copyrighted. The De-like
the Red Cross course, the partment is pleased, of course, to
Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies be given credit for its published
campaign, and the General Mills materials.
booklet, private groups and busi- 3. In many cases, prints of photo-ness
organizations can help in graphs, charts, drawings, maps, and
smaller, less formal collaborations. other illustrations that appear in the
Earlier this year, for example, the publications may be obtained at
Dairy Council distributed to its 32 nominal cost by writing to the Pho-centers
across the country are- tography Division, Office of Govern-source
packet for schools that had mental and Public Affairs, U.S. De-been
put together by the New Eng- partment of Agriculture, Washington,
land regional office of USDA's Food D.C. 20250. Telephone:(202)447-6633.
and Nutrition Service. The packet, 4. Although the Department can-
Making the Most of Your School not lend original artwork or other
Lunch Dollars, was full of sugges- reproducibles, in many instances
tions from state nutrjtionists and lo- electroplate or offset negatives of
cal food service directors on ways to parts or all of a publication can be
improve school lunch management purchased frorn the Government
and CU>t costs while maintaining Printing Office for use in reproduc-quality.
tion. For a quotation of costs, write·
By distributing the packet to its 32 to the Superintendent of Planning
centers, the Dairy-Council helped Division, Government Printing Of-get
more widespread use of the in- fice, Washington, D.C. 20401.
formation. Individual centers could 5. In re~uesting photographic or
reprint the packet or use it in some other prints from the Office of Gov-other
way to help schools in their ernmental and Public Affairs or
area. electroplates or negatives from the
Newspapers and radio and televi- Government Printing Office, please
sion stations can also help. This state the full title, issue date,
April, the Minneapolis Tribune re- number and any other information
prihted from this magazine a set of about the publication that will help,
recipes for low-cost nutritious meals in identifying it. If possible, enclose
particularly suited for small families *a marked copy of the publication.
or elderly or handicapped peopl.e liv- For more information, write:
ing alone on tight budgets. In July, a Office of Governmental and
Public Affairs
U.S. Department of' Agriculture
Washington, D.C. 20250
Food and Nutrition
I f you are interested in helping
with food assistance or nutrition
education in your community­either
on. your own or as part of an
organization or business-there are
many things you can do. What you
choose, of course, will depend on
the particular needs in your area.
We've talked with people all over
the country who have initiated pri­vate
projects or are helping public
agencies in some way. We wanted to
find out how they identified needs in
their communities, what motivated
them to get involved, what problems
and successes they've had, and what
advice they'd offer others wanting to
try something similar.
We've also talked with state and
local food program managers
who've had success in using volun­teers
to stretch their resources.
Many say they've found some unex­pected
benefits from working with
volunteers.
Whether you're in the private sec­tor
looking for a way to help or in
the public sector looking for people
to lend you a hand, the examples on
the following pages may give you
some ideas. In each case, you'll find
the name and address of someone
to contact for more information.
If you're unfamiliar with the food
assistance programs USDA adminis­ters
in cooperation with state and
local agencies, you'll find a list of
them on pages 22-23, along with
some suggestions on how volun­teers
can help.
Businesses and food banks
work together to meet
emergency food needs
Kroger Company of
Cincinnati
In a 4-month pilot project, the
Kroger Company of Cincinnati is
helping low-income families enrich
their diets with fresh fruits and
vegetables.
Once a month participating fami­lies
get free certificates which they
can exchange for fresh produce at
any Kroger food stores in the great­er
Cincinnati area. The certificates
are good for 30 days. In addition to
certain fruits and vegetables, which
Kroger specifies, the families can al­so
use the certificates for milk and a
few other items. In June, for exam­ple,
3,500 families in 19 area neigh­borhoods
used the certificates to get
bananas, milk, bread, potatoes, and
peanut butter.
The Greater Cincinnati Nutrition
Council, a nonprofit community­based
nutrition education agency, is
working with Kroger on the project.
The Nutrition Council approached
Kroger with the idea last spring, af­ter
a survey showed that food pan­tries
in the area were getting more
and more requests for food.
October 1982
A Kroger Company employee talks to a store
manager about the food certificate program.
"The pantries were also concerned
that their clients were getting very
few vegetables and no fresh milk or
fruit," says Brenda Coleman, who
manages the project for the council.
Storing and transporting fresh foods
is often difficult for the pantries,
which normally deal with canned
goods.
"We had worked with Kroger be­fore
on community nutrition proj­ects,"
says Coleman, "and they re­sponded
favorably to our suggestion
about food certificates." The Nutri­tion
Council and Kroger met in
March and by the end of April, the
council had submitted a formal pro­posal
to Kroger. By June 15, the first
certificates were being distributed.
"The food certificates are for
emergency cases such as families
who have no money left and are
waiting for their unemployment or
welfare checks," explains Robin Iori,
a Kroger Company staff assistant.
"The food pantries know who the
needy families are in their areas and
we rely on them to get the certifi­cates
out," she says.
To encourage families to get full
nutritional value from the foods,
Kroger and the Nutrition Council
provide nutrition information, in­cluding
recipes and brochures.
Both Iori and Coleman see the
project as supplementing govern­ment
feeding efforts. And Michael
McKechnie, executive director of the
Nutrition Council, believes that this
project is reflective of the new spirit
of public/private partnership.
"This program and our participa­tion
in it provide an opportunity for
a private sector corporation to join
with charitable, nonprofit organiza­tions
to address a major community
need," McKechnie said in announc­ing
the project. "We recognize that
this project cannot all by itself erad­icate
hunger. But Kroger and the
Nutrition Council believe it repre­sents
a beginning in addressing
emergency hunger needs in our
community."
Once the 4-month pilot test ends
on October 15, the two groups will
evaluate it and decide whether to
*co ntinue it. For more information, write:
Robin Iori, Staff Assistant
The Kroger Company
1014 Vine Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45201
Telephone: (513) 762-4942
Brenda Coleman, Project Manager
Greater Cincinnati Nutrition Council
2400 Reading Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Telephone: (513) 621-3262
7
Michigan Bell Telephone
In May, Michigan Bell Telephone
Company awarded a $100,000 grant
to the Greater Detroit Chamber of
Commerce for a project to solicit
donations of food for needy people.
According to William C. Patterson,
Michigan Bell's corporate contribu­tions
manager, the company
awarded the grant to the Chamber
of Commerce after conducting a
study of. the most pressing short­term
needs of people in southeast
Michigan. The study, which Bell
completed early in 1982, showed
that, largely due to unemployment,
the number of people seeking food
from community organizations had
increased dramatically, with more
food needed to meet the increased
need.
The study and the project are part
of a new attitude toward serving the
community, says Patterson. "We've
moved from a reactive philanthropy
to a more responsive philanthropy,"
he explains. "Instead of waiting for
requests for help, we go out into the
community and see where the needs
are."
Bell awarded the grant to the
Greater Detroit Chamber of Com­merce's
Food Industry Council,
which has had a long association
with food assistance efforts. In the
early 1960's, the council participated
in the development of a food stamp
program in Detroit that became a
test model for the national Food
Stamp Program.
Under the current project, the
Food Industry Council is seeking
food donations from Michigan
growers, processors, distributors,
and other sources. "Within 2
months, we had already solicited
about 500,000 pounds of food and
were well on the way to our goal of
1 million pounds," says Bob Guer­rini,
executive director of the
council.
"We've been talking with our 300
member firms in Detroit, and we'll
be going to national companies for
donations too," Guerrini adds. Once
collected, the food is distributed to
community organizations such as
food banks and soup kitchens.
Once the goal of 1 million pounds
is reached? "If there's still a need
8
and the resources are available, we
will go as long as it takes to help the
*hu ngry," Guerrini says. For more information, write:
William C. Patterson
Manager, Corporate Contributions
Michigan Bell Telephone Company
1365 Cass Avenue
Detroit, Michigan 48226
Telephone: (313) 223-9900
At a North Carolina food bank, community
workers select food for local charities.
Pittsburgh Community
Food Bank
In communities throughout the
country, food banks play a crucial
role in meeting emergency food
needs. They vary in size and opera­tion,
but their goal is essentially the
same: to collect food that might oth­erwise
go to waste and redistribute
it through local charities to people
in need of food help.
Food banks get donations from
producers, wholesalers, grocery
chains, and individual stores. The
food is usable but for one reason
or another cannot be sold. Some
food banks have gleaning programs
in which volunteers go into fields,
canneries, orchards, and packing
houses to collect food that is slightly
bruised or that will be plowed under.
Donors can deduct from their taxes
the cost of the food pi us 50 percent
of the difference between its cost
and the normal sale price.
Many food banks join networks so
they can have access to information
about surplus food nationwide. The
largest food bank network is Second
Harvest in Phoenix, Arizona, which
was started in 1967 and has grown
into a nationwide network of 40
banks.
One member of Second Harvest is
the Pittsburgh Community Food
Bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It
supplies food to 177 local charities
in western Pennsylvania, West Vir­ginia,
and eastern Ohio. The four
full-time employees get help from
volunteers from Good Will, the Ur­ban
League, local churches, and
other groups.
According to director Alex Bir­man,
the food bank gets donations
from 30 local businesses and dis­tributes
more than 200,000 pounds
of food each month. "We're doing
well," Birman says. "We're getting
local donations, but we could al­ways
use more."
This year, along with six other
food banks in various parts of the
country, the Pittsburgh Community
Food Bank is helping the federal gov­ernment
test the feasibility of provid­ing
certain USDA-donated foods to
food banks for emergency distribu­tion
to needy people.
Through the project the food bank
gets dry milk, butter, and cheese
from the Pennsylvania state distribut­ing
agency. The bank passes the
food on to a select number of chari­ties
it serves, and the charities give
the food to families or individuals
who need it. During the first 9
months of the project, between
3,000 and 4,000 families in the Pitts­burgh
area received USDA-donated
food through the food bank.
Birman says these people in­cluded
unemployed steelworkers,
people who had unexpectedly high
medical or utility bills, people who
had their food stamps stolen or
whose food stamps had run out be­fore
the end of the month, and peo-
21e in other crisis situations.
Jl{ For more information, write:
Alex Birman
Hunger Action Coalition
Pittsburgh Community Food Bank
P.O. Box 4259
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15203
Telephone: (412) 765-3919
Food and Nutrition
Food stores and individual
volunteers help mothers
and their babies
Operation Stork
Operation Stork is a volunteer­staffed
health and nutrition educa­tion
program sponsored by the
Metropolitan Memphis Chapter of
the March of Dimes. This year the
superintendent of the state public
health department named Opera­tion
Stork as the outstanding volun­teer
health program in Tennessee.
The program started 6 years ago
after members of the local chapter
of B'nai B'rith women contacted
the March of Dimes to ask what
sort of volunteer work they could
do in the health field. Consultants
with the Memphis health depart­ment's
staff revealed that the
department's nurses just didn't
have time to give their clients all
the health and nutrition education
they felt was needed.
To meet this need, March of
Dimes personnel, in cooperation
with staff from Crump Women's
Hospital, developed a curriculum
for a six-part course to be given
to pregnant women. Every Sep­tember,
new volunteers learn how
to give the course. Doctors from
the University of Tennessee's med­ical
school and public health
nurses train the volunteers, donat­ing
their own time and expertise to
do so. The training lasts all day for
4 days.
After being trained, the volun­teers
conduct classes for women
with routine pregnancies at five dif­ferent
health clinics in Memphis.
Classes last 30 to 45 minutes, and
from 6 to 20 women usually attend
each. The volunteers use visual
aides, such as filmstrips and
charts, and question-and-answer
techniques to involve the women.
Clinic patients can begin the
course at any time. The course is
continually recycled, and patients
don't have to wait for the first class
to begin the course. Classes can
be taken in any sequence. WIC
participants and any other women
October 1982
who come to the health clinics are
eligible to take the course.
"One of the liveliest sessions of
the course," says Twyla Dixon of
the March of Dimes' staff, "is a dis­cussion
of the myths about preg­nancy."
According to Dixon, nurses
at the health clinics report that
their patients are very relaxed and
open with the volunteers and ask
more questions than they might in a
more formal atmosphere.
Volunteers include not only
members of B'nai B'rith Women.
The March of Dimes issues public
service announcements each year
soliciting volunteers. Many women
have volunteered as a result of
these announcements. Most are
housewives, including a number of
doctors' wives, and some are
teachers who volunteer during the
*months school is not in session .
For more information, write:
Twyla Dixon
March of Dimes
Metropolitan Memphis Chapter
2600 Poplar Street
Memphis, Tennessee 38112
Telephone: (901) 396-2600
Cynthia Milk Fund
In 1914, Memory McCord, are­porter
for the Memphis Press, one
of the parent newspapers of to­day's
Press-Scimitar, discovered a
mother and a baby in a Memphis
tenement with no money for food
or heat. Her moving story about
the two, under the byline of Cyn­thia
Grey, prompted a number of
Memphis citizens to send in con­tributions
for the baby.
Knowing there must be other
hungry babies, Memory McCord
helped establish the Cynthia Milk
Fund, named for her byline, to help
raise money from concerned citi ­zens
to provide those babies a
healthy start in life.
The Cynthia Milk Fund continues
today, providing formula to needy
infants and, in addition, evaporated
milk to needy elderly people with
special nutrition needs. Over a
year's time, a total of 300 to 350
babies and elderly people are
helped through the fund . They are
selected and certified for the spe­cial
help by the staff of the county
health department. They may par­ticipate
for up to a year.
Both the WIC Program and the
Commodity Supplemental Food
Program (CSFP) operate in Mem­phis
and Shelby County, serving
the majority of needy infants in the
area. The infants served through
the Cynthia Milk Fund are primarily
children who are not participating
in WIC and CSFP- they include
children of destitute transients,
children in child abuse cases, and
children of persons who have had
an emergency, like having their
home burn.
In some instances, the Cynthia
Milk Fund does provide formula to
babies participating in the CSFP.
The CSFP does not currently offer
soybased formula, so children who
must have such formula can re­ceive
it from the Cynthia Milk
Fund.
In the early days, money for the
fund was raised on special "milk
maid days." Young women dressed
as milk maids collected donations
in the streets of Memphis, like the
Salvation Army does at Christmas.
Today the Press-Scimitar's em­ployees
solicit through a more so­phisticated
campaign. To encour­age
donations during the annual
fund-raising drive, the newpaper
prints pictures of babies who have
received milk from the fund. Or­ganizations,
corporations, service
and social clubs, and individuals
contribute on their' own behalf or in
memory of someone else. One of
the largest contributors is the Elvis
Presley Fan Club. During his life-.
time, Presley was one of the fund 's
biggest supporters.
Staff members of the Memphis
Press-Scimitar handle all financial
aspects of the fund, from soliciting
money to paying the bills for milk
purchases. All money collected for
the fund is used to purchase milk;
none is used to pay administrative
expenses.
9
The county health department
handles all other aspects of the
fund's administration. Nurses at
health department clinics screen
potentially eligible infants and el­derly
patients a.nd refer them to
health department home econo­mist
Ida Corbin. Based on the
clients' financial and medical
needs, she determines whether
they are eligible and, if they are,
issues vouchers which the partici­pants
redeem for milk at the health
department's warehouse.
Depending on need, Ida Corbin
may enroll clients for as long as
6 months. If their medical problems
continue after 6 months, she may
Working with area grocers, Barbara Smith Grocers place a special sticker next to items
found a way to help WIC mothers shop for food. that can be purchased with WIC vouchers.
Portland Food Stores
Southeast Asian refugees partici­pating
in the WIC program are often
at a loss when searching through su­permarket
shelves for the foods they
can purchase with WIC vouchers.
Now, thanks to the efforts of several
Portland, Oregon, food stores, they ·
just "look for the sticker."
The sticker is an adhesive-backed
WIC logo, a stylized graphic of a
mother with children, that several
food stores in Portland have volun­teered
to attach to shelves next to
eligible WIC program foods. The
stickers graphically identify for non­English
speaking WIC participants
the cereals, juices, cheese, and oth­er
foods provided through WI C.
Barbara Smith, a community
health nurse at one of five WIC clin­ics
in Multnomah County, was the
catalyst behind the project She says
the idea was sparked when she was
standing in line at the supermarket
one day and saw a WIC participant
10
approach the checkstand with an
armload of mistakenly selected, in­eligible
items. The cashier had to
close the checkstand while he took
the customer back through the
aisles, explaining which foods could
be purchased with WIC vouchers.
Several minutes passed. The WIC
participant was embarrassed, and
other customers in the growing line
became understandably agitated. "It
was obvious," says Smith, "that we
needed to somehow better identify
the WIC foods."
Smith made a pitch to three
major chain stores in the area-Fred
Meyers, Safeway, and Albertson's­explaining
the problem and why
stickers would help. All agreed to
give them a try, and later small in­dependent
stores joined in.
Safeway public relations represen­tative
Bridgett Flanagan was enthusi­astic
about the project from the
start. She suggested Safeway test
the idea first in a single store, and is
now, as a result of that test, recom­mending
that all Safeway stores in
*enroll them for another 3 to 6 months.
For more information, write:
Ida Corbin
Nutrition Section
Memphis/Shelby County Health
Department
814 Jefferson Avenue
Memphis, Tennessee 38105
Telephone: (901) 528-3753
The stickers are particularly helpful to
Portland's Southeast Asian WIC participants.
the area use the stickers. She says
the pilot has fostered a better under­standing
of the program among
store clerks, who are now more sen­sitive
to the shopping problems of
many Southeast Asians.
Store manager Roger Braswell
says the stickers allow his WIC cus­tomers
to shop without assistance.
"It's more convenient for them and
makes them feel more independent"
Barbara Smith gives a lot of credit
to the stores for their willingness to
help with the project She's now get­ting
requests for the stickers from all
over Oregon, and is hoping to ap­proach
manufacturers of WIG-eligi­ble
foods with the idea of using the
*W IC logo on their product labeling. For more information, write:
Barbara Smith
Multnomah County WIC Program
8918 North Woolsey Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97203
Telephone: (503) 248-5304
Food and Nutrition
Religious gro~ps become
partners with local agencies
St. Philip's Episcopal,
Church of the Good Shepherd
funds from Durham Congregations
ln Action, an organization of Catho­lic,
Protestant, and Jewish congre-
Two and a half years ago, Saint
Philip's Episcopal Church in Dur­ham,
North Carolina, opened a com­munity
kitchen to provide hot meals
to the destitute and homeless.
With the exception of a part-time
paid director, the kitchen is staffed
entirely by volunteers, who range in
age from 13 to over 80. Retirees,
housewives, Boy Scouts, and Duke
University students work side by
side preparing and serving meals.
These volunteers gave 4,300 hours
of their time in 1981 to the communi­ty
kitchen. ·
Food for the meals comes from a
variety of sources. Summertime
brings gifts of fresh produce from
parishioners' gardens. Local busi­nesses
donate some food items, and
other food is picked up at the Com­munity
Food Bank in Raleigh . As a
nonprofit charitable organization,
the kitchen qualifies for USDA­donated
foods like butter, cheese,
dry milk, flour and rice.
"Many of the people who come
here prefer to remain anonymous,
and we make no attempt to find out
their identities," says Betsy Rollins,
director of the community kitchen.
In nearby Rocky Mount, North
Carolina, the Church of the Good
Shepherd has a similar program.
Like Saint Philip's, this kitchen
obtains its food from a variety of
sources, fncluding donations from
individuals, businesses, food banks,
and the Department of Agriculture.
Reverend David Lovelace, assis­tant
rector of the Church of the
Good Shepherd, says that the kitch­en's
clients include many unskilled
workers unable to find jobs. They
are often not willing to apply for
public assistance or are ineligible
for assistance because they have no
permanent street address.
Although the Durham and Rocky
Mount kitchens each began as one
church's project, both have evolved
into community endeavors. Saint
Philip's operation receives part of its
October 1982
gations from all over the city. Other
funds come from the community at
large. In Rocky Mount, churches of
other denominations supply lists of
.volunteers and donate funds for the
~hurch of Good Shepherd's kitchen.
Jill{ For more information, write:
Reverend C. Thomas Midyette
St. Philip's Episcopal Church
P.O. Box 218
Durham, North Carolina 27702
Telephone: (919) 682-5708
Reverend David Lovelace
Church of the Good Shepherd
231 North Church Street
Rocky Mount, North Carolina
Telephone: (919) 442-1134
At the Church of the Good Shepherd,
volunteer Polly Evans makes sandwiches.
·First United Methodist
Church of Dallas
The First United Methodist
Church of Dallas is working on sev­eral
food-related projects that in-volve
partnerships with public
agencies.
· "In setting our yearly church
goals, we decided that ministering
to the needs of the community
should be our top priority," says Jo
Biggerstaff, director of program min­istries.
Since surveys showed that
food assistance was one of the most
needed services, Biggerstaff re­searched
ways in which the church
could help fill that need.
One of their projects was begun
through cooperation with the city of
Dallas, which sponsors USDA's
Summer Food Service Program for
Children. This summer, 54 volun­teers
from the church helped get
lunchtime meals to low-income
children at sites thoughout the city.
The volunteers went wherever
they were needed-sometimes in
their own neighborhoods, other
times clear across town-doing
whatever was needed to help the
paid staff serve meals, supervise the
children, and clean up. This summer
more than 11,000 children received
meals through the city-sponsored
program, and of the 70 volunteers
helping at the 62 sites, more than
two-thirds were from First United
Methodist.
Church volunteer Martha Christ­ian,
a high school teacher, and her
teenage daughter Emily worked in
an east Dallas feeding site located in
a primarily Asian-American neigh­borhood.
"I wanted to do something
meaningful with my summer vaca- .
tion and to provide my daughter
with a valuable learning experi­ence,"
says Martha Christian. Many
of the children at the site spoke only
limited English and were unfamiliar
with many of the American foods be­ing
served.
In another community project,
First United Methodist is working
with a private donor and a communi­ty
health agency to provide emer­gency
food to infants whose families
cannot feed them adequately. So
far, the project has provided infant
formula to about 400 if1fants, most
of whom get the formula for a short
time, often until their families can
enroll them in the WIC program.
The project began in January
1982, after a San Antonio church
approached First United Methodist
with the offer of a sizeable grant
from an anonymous donor. The
money was for the sole purpose of
11
improving infant nutrition in the Dal­las
area.
Reverend Walter Purkey, looking
for the best way to use the money,
approached Horrace Sarabia, direc­tor
of the Los Barrios Unidos Com­munity
Clinic, a federally funded
health agency, with the idea of dis­tributing
infant formula.
A volunteer from First United Methodist talks
with a child participating in the summer food
service program.
One of Reverend Purkey's key
concerns was that the emergency
project not be viewed as in any way
promoting the use of infant formula
over breastfeeding, and he chose
Los Barrios with this concern in
mind. "I was impressed by the fact
that the clinic provided comprehen­sive
prenatal and postpartum educa­tion
to their patients and then re­spected
the patient's decision about
what feeding method best suited
their situation," he says.
The way the project works is this:
The staff of the Los Barrios clinic se­lect
and enroll the children in the
program, using basically the same
criteria as for the WIC program, but
making exceptions where they feel it
is appropriate. The clinic also dis­tributes
the formula, wl;lich comes
from a local supplier. United Method­ist
oversees the account, pays the
supplier, and reports the progress of
12
the project back to the donor. Los
Barrios is also cooperating with 9 or
10 other health agencies who have
clients who may need the formula.
First United Methodist plans to
continue the infant feeding project
as long as it can. Originally the
grant was for 1 year, but the private
donor may continue to provide the
money into the following year or
longer. Church volunteers also plan
to continue helping with the summer
*fo od service program. For more information, write:
Jo Biggerstaff
Director of Program Ministries
1928 Ross Avenue
Dallas, Texas 75201
Telephone: {214) 742-6222
Cleveland Interchurch
Council, Catholic Diocese of
Cleveland
The Hunger Task Force of the
Greater Cleveland Interchurch
Council operates 14 hunger centers
throughout the city. Serving the
emergency food needs of about
12,000 people a month, these cen­ters
provide small quantities of food
to poor people who are either inelig­ible
for welfare benefits, who are
waiting for a payment to arrive, or
who are in some crisis situation.
The Hunger Task Force relies on
about 145 volunteers as well as on
thousands of people who donate
food and transport it to distribution
centers. The Catholic Diocese of
Cleveland operates 18 similar cen­ters.
During 1981, the 18 centers
provided canned goods to approxi­mately
100,000 people and served
hot meals and sandwiches to 80,000.
This past summer, both groups
got a boost from a food drive they
helped organize and participated in.
Hunger Week, June 13-20, was a
collaborative effort of more than 20
private firms and public organiza­tions
including restaurants, unions,
paper and printing companies, the
city government, and church
groups. This wide-ranging effort to
collect food for the hunger centers
was publicized by community
groups and the media using public
service announcements prepared by
the City of Cleveland.
Managers of Burger King Restau­rants,
Cleveland Tux Shops, WKYC­TV
Channel 3, Cleveland fire sta­tions,
and the Cleveland Indians
Stadium all agreed to have their fa­cilities
used as drop-off points for
cans of nonperishable food items.
Anyone donating four or more cans
of food received a ticket to attend a
thank-you party culminating Hunger
Week at the Cleveland Convention
Center on June 20.
-- The mayor-of Cleveland also re-ceived
a thank you, a plaque from
the Hunger Task Force and the Cath­olic
Diocese, for his support of the
project. "The City of Cleveland do­nated
the convention center space
so we saved about $3,0QO on rent for
the party," says Mylion Waite, direc­tor
of the Hunger Task Force.
Burger King, the Cleveland fire­fighters,
and the Teamsters Union
transported the donated goods from
the drop-off points to the conven­tion
center. At the convention cen­ter,
another group of volunteers, in­cluding
Boy Scouts and Catholic
youth, worked all day June 21 to sort
and pack the canned food in boxes.
Once Cleveland's Hunger Week
had ended, about 12,800 cans of
food, donated by concerned citizens
and valued at $14,000, were on their
*w ay to the 32 hunger centers. For more information, write:
Mylion Waite
Director, Hunger Task Force
Interchurch Council of Greater
Cleveland
2230 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44115
Telepone: {216) 621-5925
Food and N-utrition
IJ
I
Communities mobilize for
the special cheese
distribution to the needy
Volunteer efforts in
Wisconsin and Minnesota
All across the country volunteers
have pitched in to help their states
distribute USDA-donated cheese to
needy people.
"The response of volunteers has
been tremendous," says Wisconsin's
surplus cheese coordinator Will
Dahl. Thanks to volunteers, Dahl
says, the state was able to distribute
more than 1 million pounds of
cheese in March for less than a cent
a pound in state costs. "The total
cost to the state, including my sal­ary,
was $9,200," he says. "People
are willing to help."
Dahl credits 14 community action
program agencies (CAPs) for taking
the leadership role in coordinating
the cheese distribution in the major­ity
of Wisconsin's 72 counties.
In rural counties, CAPs worked
along with such groups as the Fu­ture
Farmers of America. "These
young people provided physical
labor, and some of their parents
donated trucks to transport the
cheese to the needy," Dahl says.
In urban Milwaukee County, more
than 1,000 volunteers helped dis­tribute
275,000 pounds of cheese at
127 sites, 50 of which were affiliated
with the Office on Aging and 77 with
various community-based organiza­tions.
"The Red Cross and the Na­tional
Guard also helped out by pro­viding
volunteers and trucks," says
George Gerharz, director of plan­ning
for the Community Relations­Social
Development Commission,
the CAP agency charged with over­seeing
the Milwaukee County
distribution.
In neighboring Minnesota, Gover­nor
AI Quie formed a Committee on
the Distribution of Surplus Farm
Products to h.elp distribute the sur­plus
cheese and plan for any future
commodity distribution. Comprised
October 1982
of members from both the public
and private sectors, the committee is
headed by Robert Bonine, Pillsbury
Vice President for Community Affairs.
Through voluntary donations from
the Pillsbury Company, Cargill,
General Mills, International Multi­foods,
and Hormel, the committee
raised $31,000 to help underwrite
the cost of storing, moving, and dis­tributing
more than 700,000 pounds
of cheese.
"It also took a massive voluntary
effort at the community level to
move the cheese," says Bob Swan­son,
who coordinated the first sur­plus
cheese distribution in the state.
"We had everyone from women's
groups to firemen and retirees help­ing
out with the distribution ."
As in Wisconsin, CAP agencies in
Minnesota played an important part;
they sent out notices of eligibility to
all eligible households on low-in­come
energy assistance lists. Eight
state hospitals and seven commer­cial
warehouses donated cold
storage facilities. 1i For more information, write:
Will Dahl
Director, Bureau of Economics and
Market Development
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 8911
801 West Badger Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53708
Telephone: (608) 267-9052
Tom Williams
Director, Surplus Commodities
Distribution Program
Minnesota Department of Economic
Security
150 East Kellogg Boulevard
St. Paul, Minnesota 55101
Telephone: (612) 297-3397
Associated Milk Producers
The Associated Milk Producers
Inc. (AM PI) is an affiliate of the
American Dairy Council. AMPI's Ar­lington,
Texas, office is one of the
many private groups that have been
helping with the cheese distribution
in the Southwest.
AMPI's Arlington office serves Ar­kansas,
Kansas, New Mexico, Okla­homa,
Tennesee, Texas, and parts
of Mississippi. Nutrition consultants
located throughout the states work
with teachers, dietitians, members of
the medical community, and others
who may need nutrition education
materials or presentations.
When the cheese distribution be­gan,
AMPI's information network
enabled the association to offer im­mediate
help to state agencies need­ing
to line up local distributors. Staff
members made several thousand
phone calls to organizations that
might be interested. They also
helped spread news about the pro­gram
to needy individuals.
To help people getting the cheese
make the best use of it, AM PI pre­pared
a fact sheet with suggestions
on storing and using the cheese and
information on its nutritional value.
According to Betty Pinkerton, AMPI
public information specialist, the as­sociation
distributed 75,000 copies
of the fact sheet in the seven states
the Arlington offices serves. They
have also written news stories and
feature articles for local newspapers
.2nd professional publications.
Jl{ For more information, write:
·Betty Pinkerton
Information Specialist
Associated Milk Producers, Inc.
1600 East Lamar Boulevard
Arlington, Texas 76011
Telephone: (214) 461-2674
Judy Lott Community
Center, Football Star
Billy Joe Dupree
Many professional athletes con­tribute
time or lend their support in
some other way to charitable causes
and organizations. All-pro tight end
Billy Joe Dupree of the Dallas Cow­boys
is one of them. He takes time.
out of his busy schedule to work at
the Judy Lott Community Center, an
all-volunteer organization that has
programs serving elderly and handi­capped
people and delinquent
youths in the Dallas area.
Dupree, who also runs his own
concrete business, finds time to
13
---
work both as a volunteer at the cen­ter
and as a member of its board of
directors. This spring, when the cen­ter
began distributing USDA-donat­ed
cheese to the needy, Dupree was
on hand to register elderly clients to
receive their packages. As they
walked into the small frame house,
which is located in a residential area
on the outskirts of downtown Dallas,
Dupree greeted them warmly and
took down each person's name,
address, and social security number.
Dupree says he was raised in a
community similar to the one where
the center is located, and can easily
relate to the problems and needs of
the people it serves. He says it takes
a lot of patience, tolerance, and per­serverance
to successfully complete
his duties as a volunteer, but the re­wards
are well worth the effort.
"I really enjoy helping people," he
says. "I've always been told that if
you give a little bit, through the
grace of God, you'll get a little bit
back. That's not the primary reason I
get involved-to get anything
back-it's just that I think I have
more than enough to give right now,
because I've been very fortunate.
"Being involved in this type of
thing gives you a better sense of
where you are, the reality of life and
giving. In the athletics and enter­tainment
business, you're a little bit
removed from what really goes on in
everyday life. Spending a little bit of
14
time in the community gives me a
better sense of values."
Verna Thomas, the center's execu­tive
director, says Dupree's volun-
Left: Billy Joe Dupree takes time out of a busy
schedule to help at the Judy Lott Center.
Right: Pearl Hill is another volunteer at the
center, which offers a variety of services.
teer work has been a valuable asset
in accomplishing the organization's
goals. The center has been in opera­tion
only about 20 months and is run
entirely on donated funds and mate­rials.
The cheese distribution is only
one of the center's activities, but
during the first 3 months the cheese
was available, the organization
managed to get it to more than 3,000
people, with additional distributions
*pl anned in the coming months. For more information, write:
Verna Thomas
Executive Director
Judy Lott Community Center
2122 Idaho Street
Dallas, Texas 75216
Telephone: (214) 375-0503
Service groups and
industry personnel share
their skills
Georgia School Food
Service Association
Sharing technical expertise is
another way people from the private
and public sectors can help each
other. To make it easier for school
food service managers to benefit
from the expertise of private indus­try,
the Georgia School Food Serv­ice
Association (GSFSA) sponsors
annual industry seminars for its
members every fall.
Begun 4 years ago, the seminars
benefit industry participants as well
as school food service people. While
industry personnel share their ideas
and insights about food service,
they also have a chance to learn
more about child nutrition program
requirements. According to Jessie
Walker, executive director of the
GSFSA, the seminars have proven to
be an excellent way for the two
groups to exchange information and
ideas.
"The seminars have created an
environment for better communica­tion,"
she says. "Industry personnel
contact our association on a more
frequent basis now. And, the semi­nars
have given school food service
personnel a better understanding of
industry's concerns in marketing for
school food and nutrition pro­grams."
Because of the success of
the seminars, other states have fol­lowed
Georgia's lead and are also
holding industry seminars.
The GSFSA has an industry advi­sory
committee that plans the indus­try
seminars. The committee in­cludes
representatives of companies
that sell food service equipment,
Food and Nutrition
food, and supplies. It also includes
representatives of various commodi­ty
commissions. In addition to plan­ning
the industry seminar, the advi­sory
committee also provides a
mechanism for year-round commun­ication
between industry and
GSFSA members.
The yearly seminars are presented
with the close cooperation of the
Georgia Department of Education.
Department of Education staff
members participate in explaining
regulations and program policies. ·
USDA employees also attend and
may make presentations.
Industry representatives who at­tend
are discouraged from bringing
exhibits, but they participate in the
program by giving speeches and
leading panel or roundtable discus­sions.
This year representatives led
discussions on equipment issues
and merchandising in school food
service.
Jessie Walker says it is crucial to
plan an industry seminar early. Busy
travel schedules can limit involve­ment
of industry representatives
unless they are notified well in
advance. She also recommends that
seminars be held in accessible loca­tions
but not in major metropolitan
areas where there are lots of distrac­tions.
Isolated, relaxing locations
*w ork best. For more information, contact:
Jessie Walker
Executive Director
Georgia School Food Service
Association
3951 Snapfinger Parkway, Suite 350
Decatur, Georgia 30035
Telephone: (404) 289-2283
Massachusetts School
Business Cooperative
The Massachusetts Association of
School Business Officials Coopera­tive
(MASSO Coop) is a nonprofit
organization that helps school sys­tems
cope with the many problems
facing them today.
One of the association's current
projects is a pilot test of a computer
system that could help Massachu­setts
schools cut costs significantly
in their school lunch programs.
October 1982
Under the test, one school district
in the state-the Brockton school
district-is automating its lunch op­erations
using computer software
leased by a Plattsburgh, New York,
company. MASSO is picking up the
cost of leasing the software for a full
7 months. The school already has a
computer, so there was no need to
buy or lease additional hardware.
With the software package, literal­ly
everything from soup to nuts is
programmed into the computer. In
goes information on recipes, ingre­dients,
inventory, labor, and mate­rials.
Out comes print-outs showing
price per meal, price per ingredient,
nutrients per recipe, amount of food
on hand, and more. When particular
ingredients are not in stock, the
computer can provide the buyer
with a complete shopping list. In
minutes, managers have information
that makes planning and budgeting
easier and more efficient.
Bob Jones, an administrative
assistant for the Brockton schools,
came up with the idea of computer­izing
school lunch operations after
seeing a presentation MASSO spon­sored
on general computer use.
Brockton approached MASSO and
asked if the association would be
willing to fund a pilot project testing
an automated school food service
system. When MASSO agreed,
Brockton became the first school in
Massachusetts to use computers in
its school lunch program. In De­cember,
when the pilot project ends,
Brockton schools will start paying
for the leased computer software
themselves.
School lunch managers from oth­er
districts have been visiting Brock­ton
to see how the new automated
system works. As a result of these
visits, several districts are expected
to automate their operations during
*th e coming year. For further information, write:
Edward A. Duprez
MASBO Cooperative Corporation
99 School Street
Weston, Massachusetts 02193
Telephone: (617) 647-5500
Allegheny County
Health Department
Some public and private agencies
are finding they can continue or ex­pand
certain services by asking
users to pay for them.
The Allegheny County, Pennsyl­vania,
health department has had
considerable success with this ap­proach
with a series of nutrition
workshops for paraprofessionals.
The workshops, which are basically
self-supporting, offer people who
work with low-income families a
chance to learn more about nutrition
and meal planning.
Participants pay $15 for the day­long
conferences, which the health
department has been offering three
to four times a year for the past
2 years.
Barbara Deskins, county nutrition­ist
in charge of the workshops, says
most people come to the workshops
because they want to be better
equipped to counsel the families
their agencies help. The partici­pants,
who generally have little nu­trition
background themselves, are
from WIC agencies, agencies serv­ing
the elderly, Head Start centers,
community service organizations,
and religious organizations, such as
Catholic Charities.
The workshops are taught by
members of the county health de­partment's
nutrition services staff.
There are also guest speakers from
. other agencies, such as the Dairy
Council, the Food and Drug Admin­istration,
and local hospitals.
Since April1981, Allegheny
County has offered six conferences,
each with a single theme. This year's
workshops have been in May, "More
Meals for Your Money," and in Sep-
*tember, "Nutrition for Adults."
For more information, write:
Barbara Deskins
Nutrition Services
Allegheny County Health
Department
3441 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Telephone: ( 412) 578-8054
15
Supermarkets and food
companies support
educational efforts
Campbell Soup Company
Those cute Campbell Kids who
used to be too fat now are exercis­ing
to slim down and lending a hand
in a new nutrition information pro­gram
presented by the General Fed­eration
of Women's Clubs.
Designed with special units to
help the elderly, low-income fami­lies,
and working women, the pro­gram
was developed by Campbell
Soup Company in Camden, New
Jersey, as part of its continuing
consumer information services.
ing; and cook in ways that protect
the nutritional value of foods.
• Tips for busy consumers, par­ticularly
working mothers, on how to
save time shopping for and prepar-
*ing food without sacrificing quality.
For more information, write:
Kit Mahon
Manager of Education and Public
Affairs
Campbell Soup Company
Campbell Place
Camden, New Jersey 08101
Telephone: (609) 964-4000
It is called "Quality Nutrition For Food Marketing Institute
All" and was introduced at the Gen­eral
Federation of Women's Clubs'
91st Annual International Conven­tion
held in Bismark, North Dakota,
in June 1982. Program kits are cur­rently
being distributed to some
11,000 GFWC clubs nationwide.
For many families looking for ad-~-~~
Each program kit includes a list of
questions members can use in de­termining
their communities' nutri­tion
information needs. For exam­ple:
What groups in the community
are receiving nutrition information?
Which ones are not? What do peo­ple
in the community know about
nutrition? Are there groups with seri­ous
nutritional needs? What com­munity
resources can be organized
to help?
Also in the kit is a checklist for ac­tion
each club can take, along with
four packages of educational mate­rials.
The packages include:
• A set of nutrition surveys to
help participants assess their food
habits and nutritional needs.
• A guide to help older citizens
adapt new information about nutri­tion
to their special needs. The
guide compares what was known in
the 1940's with today's new informa­tion
about nutrition and health.
• Suggestions for saving money
and cooking nutritionally, with in­formation
to help participants: think
ahead and shop for foods in the bas­ic
food groups; know what to look
for in unit pricing and product label-
16
vice on food budgeting and meal
planning, help is as near as the local
supermarket. Food Marketing Insti­tute,
a national association for su­permarket
retailers and wholesalers,
reports that many of its 1,100
members provide their customers
with information they can use in
planning, preparing, and shopping
for nourishing and economical
meals.
interesting collaboration, Rhode Is­land
borrowed the materials from
FMI, translated them into Portu­guese,
and printed additional copies
for wider distribution in the state.
FMI produces some of these
materials. "We have six or seven
consumer pieces our members can
use," says Linda Halleran, the asso­ciation's
director of consumer
affairs, "including ones on open dat­ing,
reading labels, and menu plan­ning
for older shoppers and food
FMI members also develop mate­rials
on their own, sometimes work­ing
with hired consultants. Many get
information from associations, such
as the Dairy Council, or from food
*m anufacturers. For more information, write:
stamp customers."
In 1981, FMI produced three
pamphlets to help food stamp
shoppers cope with inflation. Devel­oped
in cooperation with USDA's
Extension Service, the brochures
provided shopping tips, menu plans,
and monthly and weekly shopping
lists, all planned for three different
food stamp families-a family of four,
a single elderly man or woman, and
a Spanish-speaking family of four.
The brochures are still being used
by many FMI member stores and are
available from the association. In an
Linda Halleran
Food Marketing Institute
1750 K Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Telephone: (202) 452-8444
Wakefern Food Corporation
The Wakefern Food Corporation
in Elizabeth, New Jersey, has an ac­tive
consumer information service.
Wakefern is the merchandiser and
wholesale grocery supplier to 118
Shop-Rite cooperative stores
throughout the New York/New Jer­sey
metropolitan area.
Each month Wakefern prints and
distributes well over 100,000 fact
sheets and booklets dealing not only
with food shopping and nutrition,
but other subjects as well. "We han­dle
subjects in health, welfare, fi-
Food and Nutrition
nance, and consumer product safety
as well as nutrition," says Sylvia
Nadel, Wakefern's director of con­sumer
affairs.
"We were once asked to print a
large quantity of pamphlets dealing
with small claims and the court sys­tem
in both English and Spanish,
and we did it," she says. Among the
materials they've distributed are fact
sheets about the Food Stamp
Program.
The fact sheets and other mate­rials
are available next to the exit
doors in all Shop-Rite stores, but
Nadel says people do not have to be
customers to receive them. Wake­fern
has also given the materials to
church groups, civic organizations,
and health and nutrition clubs who
have requested them.
"We do all this to help the com­munity
and its people," Nadel says,
adding that being involved in the
Individual volunteers
stretch government
resources
Alabama Department of
Pensions and Security
The Alabama Department of Pen­sions
and Security started a volun­teer
program in 1979 to respond to
the needs of more clients. The pro­gram,
which gets volunteers from all
over the state, funnels extra help in­to
a wide range of social service ac­tivities,
including the food assist­ance
programs.
"Each of our 67 county offices de­signs
its own volunteer service,"
says Erin Snowden, state volunteer
coordinator. "This ensures that vol­unteers
are used where they are
needed the most." Each of the de­partment's
county offices also has
its own volunteer coordinator.
Volunteers provide a variety of
services. Many counties, for exam­ple,
use volunteers to assist case­workers
in providing protective serv­ices
to children and adults in danger
of abuse or neglect. Some volun­teers
teach parenting skills to moth­ers
who need help in learning how
to deal with their children. Other vol­unteers
provide sitting services for
elderly people in order to give care­takers
some time off. In addition, vol­unteers
do home repairs and chores
for many elderly clients.
In local food stamp offices, volun­teers
work directly with clients in a
nu.mber of ways. During the first
few days of the month when food
stamps are being issued, volunteers
pass out recipes and nutrition edu-
October 1982
cation literature. Much of this is
done in group situations, but the
volunteers also counsel clients
individually.
Many volunteers serve as desig­nated
representatives for food stamp
recipients who are elderly, disabled,
or for some other reason are unable
to go to the grocery store. They take
the recipients' grocery lists and food
stamps and do their shopping. The
volunteers feel they are especially
helpful in assisting recipients
choose nourishing foods and make
wise purchases.
Throughout the state, Snowden
has volunteers assisting the office
staff with clerical duties, such as
answering phones and helping with
filing. Most appreciated, however, is
their help with applicants.
"People walk in with sacks and
boxes full of receipts and other doc­uments,"
Snowden says. "Our volun­teers
sort out what they need and
then send people back home if
they've forgotten something." When
the applicant is called for the inter­view,
everything is in order. It saves
time for both the recipient and the
caseworker.
For families with emergency food
needs, volunteers have helped or­ganize
what the state volunteer di­rector
calls food closets. Donations
of food come from civic clubs,
churches, grocery stores, and other
business firms. Volunteers not only
community is good for business-all
business. "Our stores are part of the
neighborhood and part of the com­munity
fabric. And that fabric covers
not just one block or neighborhood,
_2ut the entire metropolitan area."
Jill{ For more information, write:
Sylvia Nadel
Wakefern Food Corporation
600 York Street
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07203
Telephone: (201) 527-3300
Retired Navy officer Nace Fresco is one of
thousands of volunteers helping with social
service programs in Alabama.
collect the food, but supervise stor­age
and issuance to those in need.
According to Snowden, among
the more than 4,400 volunteers who
help the department are increasing
numbers of professionals. "In one
county, 11 dentists are providing
free services to some of our clients,"
she says. "Psychologists, psychia­trists,
nutrition specialists, and doc­tors
of all kinds are also lending us
their services in some counties."
One professional sharing his ad­ministrative
skills is Nace Fresco,
who retired from a busy life in the
military 11 years ago. When the re­tired
lieutenant commander moved
to Montgomery in 1981, he offered
his time and talents to the Voluntary
Action Center of Montgomery. He
17
now works 4 hours a day, 4 days a
week in an administrative job with
the Department of Pensions and
Security.
The job helps Fresco-after 20
years in the Navy working 10 to 12
hours a day, he says he'd be bored
not working-and it helps people
like Charles Hutchinson, a state em­ployee
who benefits directly from
Fresco's services.
Hutchinson, who is blind, mans
the state's food stamp hotline,
answering calls that come in on a
special statewide toll-free number.
It's Hutchinson's job to answer the
myriad of questions that partici­pants,
potential participants, and
members of the general public have
about the Food Stamp Program. To
do this, he needs a thorough and
up-to-date knowledge of the
program.
Nace Fresco spends alternate
Thursdays with Hutchinson. He
reads over new policies and proce­dures,
then reads them aloud into a
tape recorder, editing and explain­ing
when necessary. The blind hot
line operator. then listens to the
tapes and make notes in Braille for
his future use.
Hutchinson says the help is invalu­able.
"I have to keep up with the
most current policies to do my job,"
he says. "Without someone to read
these changes to me, I couldn't
answer complaints and give out
information."
Statewide, the volunteer program
has been extremely successful,
Snowden says. Volunteers are often
neighbors of the people they serve
and extend a lot of good will. They
also provide the manpower for proj­ects
that could not be staffed by
full-time employees. A direct benefit
is that volunteers free other staff to
do more intensive casework with
clients.
People are eager to help their less
fortunate neighbors, Snowden says.
"All they need is a little leadership
~nd some suggestions and ideas."
~ For more information, write:
Erin Snowden
Director, Volunteer Services
Alabama Department of Pensions
and Security
Administration Building
64 North Union Street
Montgomery, Alabama 36130
Telephone: {205) 832-6930
18
In Aimes, Iowa, the local department of social
services helps bring together volunteers and
people who need help.
Iowa Department of
Human Resources
The people at Iowa's Department
of Social Services give their state­wide
volunteer program high p-riori­ty.
Looking at the benefits the state
reports, it's no wonder.
According to state volunteer
coordinator J.D. Hall, volunteers
help with the full range of social serv­ices
in the state, working at mental
health and juvenile institutions, veter­ans'
homes, schools, hospitals, and
with food assistance programs.
In 1981, Hall prepared a complete
inventory of voluntary activity in the
social service programs. The state­wide
totals told of a busy year for
Iowan volunteers. Monthly, an aver­age
of 3,688 volunteers contributed
an average of 8 hours each, result­ing
in a total for the year of 357,037
volunteer hours.
"If the department had paid these
volunteers the minimum wage and a
complete benefit package," says
Hall, "the cost to the taxpayers
would have been $2,320,632."
In the area of food assistance, vol­unteers
helped in a number of dif­ferent
ways. Nutrition volunteers in
Waterloo provided food stamp and
nutrition information in certification
offices. In Des Moines, volunteers
distributed food stamp information
Each week Harold Raymond (left) helps his
friend Tony Coughennower shop for food.
Marjorie Parham also shops for her friend Rae
Stratton.
and spoke to civic groups about nu­trition
and food stamps. Friendly vis­itors
assisted elderly and home­bound
persons with money
management and ran errands for
them. Office assistants typed, filed,
answered phones, and performed
reception duties. Volunteers gave
rides to people who otherwise
couldn't get to food stamp offices or
grocery stores.
According to Hall, a three-person
social services training team visited
four areas in the state, teaching staff
members to recruit and use
*vo lunteers. For more information, write:
J.D. Hall
Volunteer Program Director
Iowa Department of Social Services
Hoover Building, Fifth Floor
Des Moines, Iowa 50319
Telephone: {515) 281-8269
Oregon Department of
Human Resources
Oregon's Department of Human
Resources has had 14 years of expe­rience
with volunteers. The volunteer
program began informally in 1968
with a few offices using volunteers.
The state later set up a pilot project
which grew into what is today a
Food and Nutrition
statewide program with 37 volunteer
coordinators working in 30 local
offices.
Throughout the state, there are
about 1,000 volunteers contributing
15,000 to 16,000 hours per month in
three areas: senior services; adult
and family services, which includes
the Food Stamp Program; and child­ren's
services.
According to Daelene Shen, state
volunteer coordinator, careful
screening is the key to using volun­teers
successfully. "If you screen
well," she says, "volunteers will often
be as reliable as the paid staff."
Oregon uses a thorough screen­ing
process in selecting volunteers.
People fill out applications as they
would for paying jobs. They have
personal job interviews, and the
state agency staff checks their driv­ing
records and their references.
The state office also does a criminal
record check for people who work
with children.
The state recruits in several ways:
through local agencies like Port­land's
volunteer bureau; through the
media; through public speaking en­gagements,
such as to civic and re­ligious
groups; and through word of
mouth-volunteers tell other people
about what they're doing.
Shen sees a lot of advantages to
having a volunteer program. "For
one thing, it increases the communi­ty's
understanding of what the var­ious
service agencies do-it's edu­~
ational," she says. "Also, it helps
the staff by increasing the services
they can offer. And it helps the
clients by increasing the services
available to them."
While she doesn't see many dis­advantages,
she emphasizes that a
volunteer program needs to be care­fully
planned and managed. "It re­quire~
a lot of time, commitment,
and coordination on the part of the
agency," she says. "The agency has
*to make using volunteers a priority."
For more information, write:
Daelene Shen
Volunteer Program Manager
Senior Citizens Division
313 Public Service Building
Sa!,em, Oregon 97310
Telephone: (503) 373-7163
October 1982
Hawaii Department of
Social Services and Housing
In many states, volunteers help in­terpret
and translate for food pro­gram
applicants and participants
who do not speak or read English.
Hawaii's state volunteer coordinator
Elaine Tamashiro says volunteers
are tremendously helpful in this
way.
Among those applying for food
assistance in the state a_re people
who speak Chinese, Philippino,
French, German, Japanese, Korean,
Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese,
Cambodian, and Laotian. In addi­tion,
some of these people speak
particular dialects-Cantonese or
Mandarin (Chinese), for example, or
Tagalog or llokano (Philippino).
Besides assisting clients with lan­guage
problems, volunteers help in
other ways, such as providing trans­portation
to the elderly and handi­capped,
and he1ping with office
work. Tamashiro estimates that the
200 volunteers contribute a total of
28,000 hours per year to all the so­cial
service programs of the De­partment
of Social Services and
Housing.
She feels their help is essential. "In
fact," she says, "without volunteers,
the cheese distribution could not
have been possible. But," she em­phasizes,
"volunteers don't replace
paid staff, they enhance the services
the agency is able to offer."
While there are some problems of
continuity in using volunteers,
Tamashiro says, there are similar
problems with regular staff. "Volun­teers
move on, and you get tired of
Jacksonville WIC Program
Volunteers have been performing
a variety of tasks in Jacksonville,
Florida, health clinics for several
years. Many of the volunteers help­ing
with the WIC program are peo­ple
who are currently or were once
WIC participants.
Jacksonville WIC program direc­tor
Lillian Abelardo originally asked
for WIC volunteers to serve on a
local WIC advisory committee. They
gave her advice on how to present
new regulations to WIC mothers and
made suggestions for new policies.
training people and seeing them
leave," she says. "But it's not that
different than with paid workers."
Sometimes there is more continuity
than one might expect. "Some peo­ple
who have been volunteers while
students in college or graduate
school have come back as paid so­cial
workers or eligibility workers,"
Tamashiro says.
Working with volunteers is reward­ing
for clients as well as for paid
staff. "Clients accept volunteers in
many situations where they would
resent paid staff," the volunteer
coordinator says. "This is especially
true in child services cases where
clients are more open and less suspi­cious
with volunteers. Often clients
see volunteers as friends. "We get a
lot of feedba_~k from clients about
the volunteers. They'll tell us about
the volunteer who helped them to
the grocery store or gave them a
ride to an appointment."
To the regular staff, Tamashiro
says, "the volunteers are like family.
And, since we don't pay them, we try
to make their time pleasant by hav­ing
a variety of social activities,
small parties, picnics, and birthday
parties."
Hawaii's Department of Social
Services and Housing has had a vol­unteer
program for 10 years. 1i For more information, write:
Elaine Tamashiro
Volunteer Services Administrator
Department of Social Services
and Housing
Public Welfare Division
P.O. Box 339
Honolulu, Hawaii 96809
Telephone: (808) 548-5852
For example, one policy they sug­gested
was that a client should lose
her appointment and go fo the end
of the day's appointment list if she
arrived 30 minutes late or more.
'As caseloads grew and cuts i.n
funds and staff occurred, Abelardo
began asking for volunteers to help
in other ways. Now volunteers sign
· clients in; perform clerical duties
such as typing labels for file folders;
care for clients' children while they
are at the clinits; and help with
· translations and nutrition education.
"The volunteers have saved the
program a lot of money," Abejardo
says. "I wish I could do more for
them in return." She and her staff
19
had a volunteer appreciation day this
year to express their gratitude.
One of the ways to have a succes­ful
volunteer program, Abelardo ad­vises,
is to assign volunteers the
tasks to which they are best suited
and will perform most conscien­tiously.
She adds that she believes
volunteers have helped protect the
integrity of Jacksonville's WIC pro­gram.
Volunteers often warn other
participants against abusing the
program. According to Abelardo,
such peer pressure serves as an ef­*
fe ctive deterrent to abuse. For more information, write:
Lillian Abelardo
Department of Health and Rehabili-tative
Services
Duval County Public Health Division
51.5 West Sixth Street
Jacksonville, Florida 32206
Telephone: (904) 633-5697
Colorado WIC Program their contributions to specific clients
Colorado uses students working and groups. Auran stresses that Tri-towards
their master's degree in pub- County doesn't recruit people to "do
lie health to help with the WIC pro- stapling or wash windows." Her vol-gram.
These public health and nutri- unteers are professionals and are
tion students spend 6 to 8 weeks in treated as such.
a field work program, extending the She will even hand-tailor a volun-capabilities
of the state agency teer program for a qualified person.
while gaining valuable experience in One of her current volunteers, who
their field of specialization. is employed full-time elsewhere
Nutrition majors at the University and donates services on weekends
of Colorado and the University of and evenings, fills out her reports
Northern Colorado also work in WIC and leaves them for Auran.
offices, as do students from the diet Auran recruits with an ad in pro-technology
program at the northern fessional newsletters, such as that of
campus of the Community College the Denver Dietetics Association.
of Denver. The ad reads: "Want a day away
Colorado's volunteer program is from home? An opportunity to up-professionally
structured, with writ- date your skills? An adventure in
ten job descriptions specifying nutri- public health? Want to keep in touch
tion background and organiza- with current trends in nutrition?
tional skills. According to Alyn Park- "The Nutrition Section of Tri-
Potter, director of nutrition services County District Health Department
for Colorado's WIC program, each has a busy, progressive volunteer
volunteer contracts to work one 8- program open to interested nutri-hour
day per week, for a minimum tionists, dietitians, and home econ-of
10 weeks. omists. We will supply training and
The Tri-County District Health ideas in teaching community nutri-
Department in Englewood, Colo- tion classes, workshops, and semi-rado,
is one WIC agency that nars. Be involved! Have fun! Grow
actively recruits and trains volun- professionally!"
teers. This summer seven volun- ""'ii For more information, write:
teers, all with nutrition backgrounds, Connie Auran
helped with the program. They Director of Nutrition
included a registered dietitian, a Tri-County District Health
home economist, a graduate student Department
in dietetics, and four students in 3265 West Girard
public health. The trainees worked Englewood, Colorado 80110
one-on-one with clients, doing nutri- Telephone: (303) 761-0383
tion counseling. They also con-ducted
classes in cooking and pre-natal
care, and involved themselves
with community groups.
Connie Auran, director of nutri­tion
for Tri-County, has developed
some comprehensive guidelines and
a training notebook. Volunteers fill
out time and activity reports, tracing
20
Volunteer Sheila Webb was honored recently
for her work with food assistance in Florida.
Aorida's Volunteer
of the Year
Earlier this year, a food stamp vol­unteer
in Gadsden, Florida, was
named Volunteer of the Year by the
United Way and Tallahassee Demo­crat,
a daily newspaper. Sheila
Webb, a young woman who lost
both of her legs some years ago in
an auto-train collision, works as a
receptionist in the Gadsden County
food stamp office. She was honored
for her contribution of more than
500 hours to the office, where she
also assists callers with their prob­lems
and helps with the office files.
In presenting the award to Sheila
Webb, Steve Flournoy, administrator
of Florida's Department of Health
and Rehabilitative Services, said,
"Sheila wanted to help other people,
no matter what her personal prob­lems
were. She's outstanding. She
shows people that they can have
meaningful lives despite handicaps."
Webb was also honored for her
work as coordinator of an unusual
gleaning program sponsored by the
Florida Department of Agriculture
and area farmers. After the farmers
have completed their normal harvest
of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash,
and other crops, they allow people
in need of food to go into the fields
and gather what's left. The gleaners
always find a bountiful supply, which
Food and Nutrition
they use to supplement their food
stamp purchases. Many also can or
freeze the produce for winter
months.
Farmers are cooperative with the
gleaning program, but they do ask
that the harvesting be done in an
orderly manner to prevent damage
to the fields and other crops. This is
one of Sheila Webb's responsibili­ties.
Working at the various sites,
she assigns the vegetable pickers to
certain areas in the fields and sees
that the harvesters return with full
baskets, but with minimum damage
*to the fields. For more information, write:
Steven D. Flournoy
Direct Service Supervisor
Florida Department of Health and
Rehabilitative Services
6 South Key Street
Quincy, Florida 32551
Telephone: (904) 627-7666
Suny County Garden
Project
A number of young North Carolin­ians
'had the time of their lives gar­dening
this summer, growing
enough vegetables for themselves
and their families. By summer's end,
they had learned enough to show
their parents how to stretch their
food budgets by growing some of
their own food and canning it.
The person responsible for the
gardening project was Beth Nor­man,
a food and nutrition parapro­fessional
with the Surry County
Cooperative Extension Service.
Norman, who has received statewide
recognition for her work with volun­teers
in nutrition education pro­grams,
told 92-year-old Grady
Cooperaboutherhopesfora
garden for young people, and
Cooper took it from there.
He offered Norman use of some
land he was letting lie fallow, he
prepared the land for planting, and
he showed the young people how to
plant everything from radishes to
tomatoes and bell peppers. "He's
always eager to help out," Norman
says, "especially when it comes to
children."
October 1982
Clover Trinity Lutheran
School
At the Clover Trinity Lutheran
School in the small farming com­munity
of Clover, Idaho, volunteer
school lunch workers outnumber sal­aried
employees about 100 to 1.
The one salaried employee is the
cook, Tillie Paschen. Her volunteer
helpers are the mothers of the stu­dents-
each volunteers a day every
other month.
The volunteers help prepare food,
set up tables, wash dishes, fill out
claim forms, and do dozens of other
tasks associated with preparing and
serving hot lunches to the 100 kin­dergarten
through eighth grade stu­dents.
"Because we have volunteers,
we are able to keep our costs down
and run a quality school lunch pro­gram,"
says school lunch supervisor
Lorene Schroeder, herself a volun-
Cooper feels it's important for
people to help each other, and he
had fun watching the children culti­vate
their garden. "I've never seen
anything like it," he said. "They did a
wonderful job of getting this set up."
Norman and other adult supervi­sors
of the project taught the chil­dren
how to be careful in using farm
chemicals, and how to can and
freeze the vegetables they grew. The
24 youngsters entered their canned
goods in the county fair this fall.
teer. The school has been using vol­unteers
for 10 years.
It's not just the moms who con­tribute
to the success of the school's
lunch service. "We let the communi­ty
know, through the church's bulle­tin,
when we are running low on a
particular food, and they try to meet
our needs," says Schroeder. "We re­ceived
about $900 worth of produce
and meat this past year." One area
farmer, Donald Martens, often plants
a test plot of several acres of corn.
Instead of marketing this corn, he
gives the school staff as much as
*th ey can use and freeze. For more information, write:
Lorene Schroeder
Clover Trinity Lutheran School
Route 1, Box 314
Buhl, Idaho 83316
Telephone: (208) 543-4970
* For more information, write:
Beth Norman
Expanded Food and Nutrition
Education Program
Surry County
Box 324
Dobson, North Carolina 27017
Telephone: (919) 386-8264
Grady Cooper offers guidance to one of the
children taking part in the garden project.
21
************************
~F~a~ct~s~A~b~O~U~t~t~h~e~F~0~0~d~~*N~Ionalschoollunchand
School Breakfast Programs
Programs ... How You
Can Help
The food assistance programs
are administered by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's
Food and Nutrition Service together
with state governments and local
agencies.
Usually, state departments of
education have responsibility for
*Food Stamp Program
The Food Stamp Program helps
needy households purchase the
foods they need for good health.
Participating families get coupons,
free of charge, which they exchange
for food at authorized stores. The
value of the coupons depends on a
household's size and financial cir­cumstances.
Food stamps supple­ment
what a family spends on food.
People apply for food stamps at
their local food stamp office. This
may be a county department of so­cial
services or some other office. In
addition to qualifying on the basis of
income, families and individuals
must meet work registration re­quirements
and certain citizenship
and residency requirements.
Volunteers can:
• Serve as authorized representa­tives
for people who cannot get to
food stamp offices to apply for or
pick up their food stamps;
• Provide transportation to people
who need rides to food stamp of­fices
or grocery stores;
• Help local food stamp offices with
filing, pre-screening for eligibility,
and other clerical duties;
• Teach food stamp participants
how to get the most nutritional value
for their food dollars;
• Translate and interpret for appli­cants
and participants with lan­guage
difficulties.
22
food programs serving children in
schools, child care centers, and
summer recreation centers. State
departments of health, welfare, and
agriculture usually have responsibil­ity
for programs providing food
stamps or supplemental foods to
families or individuals.
*Food Distribution Program
Through the Food Distribution
Program, USDA purchases surplus
foods from U.S. markets and dis­tributes
them to state agencies for
use by eligible local agencies.
The foods go to schools and insti­tutions
participating in the child nu­trition
programs, to nutrition pro­grams
for the elderly, to needy
families on Indian reservations, and
to hospitals and prisons. The foods
are also used to help victims of nat­ural
disasters. The largest percent­age
of USDA-donated foods go to
schools. Currently schools get 86
percent of the foods donated by
USDA.
This year, USDA has been work­ing
with states on a special distribu­tion
of surplus process American
cheese. Volunteers throughout the
country have helped their states get
the cheese to needy people. They
have helped transport and store the
cheese, set up and staff distribution
centers, identify and inform needy
people, and make deliveries to the
housebound. These activities con­tinue
in many areas.
On an ongoing basis, parents and
other volunteers can express inter­est
in how their schools are using
the Food Distribution Program.
There are many ways schools can
save on meal costs by making better
use of USDA-donated foods.
The National School Lunch and
School Breakfast Programs help
schools serve nourishing low-cost
meals to children. In addition to
cash assistance, participating
schools get USDA-donated foods
and technical guidance. Payments
to schools are higher for meals
served to children who qualify, on
the basis of family size and income,
for free or reduced-price meals.
Volunteers can work in any
number of ways to help with school
food services. They can, for
example:
• Work as cafeteria monitors;
• Assist in planning menus that re­flect
students' preferences;
• Help prepare and serve meals and
clean up;
• Plan and help with nutrition edu­cation
activities.
*Child Care Food Program
The Child Care Food Program
helps child care facilities and institu­tions
serve nutritious meals and
snacks to pre-school and school­age
children. To participate, facili­ties
and institutions must be licensed
or approved to provide child care
services. They must also meet cer­tain
other eligibility requirements.
The program operates in nonresi­dential
day care centers, settlement
houses, outside-school-hours care
centers, family day care homes, in­stitutions
providing day care for
handicapped children, and others.
Participating facilities and institu­tions
get cash assistance, USDA­donated
foods, and technical guid­ance.
In child care centers, the
amount of cash assistance varies
according to the family size and in­come
of children served . In day care
homes, the amount of cash assist­ance
is based on a food service
payment rate.
Volunteers can :
• Help shop for and prepare meals;
• Help serve meals and supervise
children;
Food and Nutrition
• Plan and assist with activities that
teach children about food;
• Donate supplies, books, and re­source
materials.
*Summer Food Service Program
The Summer Food Service Pro­gram
for Children helps communi­ties
serve meals to needy children
when school's not in session. The
program is sponsored by public or
private nonprofit school food au­thorities
or local, municipal, county,
or state governments. Public or pri­vate
nonprofit residental camps may
also be sponsors.
The program operates in areas in
which at least 50 percent of the
children served by the site meet the
income criteria for free and re­duced-
price school meals. USDA
reimburses sponsors for operating
costs of food services up to a speci­fied
maximum rate for each meal
served. In addition, sponsors receive
som$3 reimbursement for planning,
operating, and supervising expenses.
Volunteers can help paid staff:
• Supervise children:
• Serve meals and clean up;
• Plan and carry out recreational
and educational activities.
*Special Supplemental Food
Program for Women, Infants, and
Children (WIC}
The Special Supplemental Food
Program is commonly known as
WI C. It provides nutritious food
supplements to pregnant, breast­feeding,
and postpartum women, as
well as to infants and children up to
their fifth birthday. WIC is operated
by local health clinics and other
authorized health facilities. WIC
benefits are currently provided by
approximately 7,100 clinics
throughout the country.
To qualify, mothers and children
must be individually certified as "nu­trition
risks" because of dietary need
and inadequate income. Each partic­ipating
mother or child receives in­dividually
prescribed packages of
foods high in protein, iron, calcium,
vitamin A, and vitamin C.
October 1982
Depending on the age and nutri­tional
needs of the woman, infant, or
child, the package includes such
foods as iron-fortified cereal, eggs,
juice, and either milk or fortified in­fant
formula, or cheese. In some
areas, peanut butter or dry beans or
peas may also be provided. Partici­pants
get nutrition education along
with the supplemental foods.
WIC clinics provide supplemental
foods in one of three ways. They ob­tain
foods from local firms and dis­tribute
them directly; they arrange
for home delivery; or they give
mothers vouchers to exchange for
specified items at authorized groc­ery
stores. Most clinics give partici­pants
vouchers.
Volunteers can:
• Provide transportation to mothers
and children needing rides to WIC
clinics or grocery stores;
• Help with office duties at clinics;
• Assist professional staff with nu­trition
education;
• Translate and interpret for clients
with language difficulties.
Professional volunteers, such as
doctors and other health personnel,
can also help screen applicants.
*Commodity Supplemental Food
Program (CSFP}
The Commodity Supplemental
Food Program (CSFP) distributes
USDA-donated foods to low-income
women and children certified by
participating local health agencies.
Those eligible include infants, chil­dren
up to age 6, and pregnant or
breastfeeding women vulnerable to
malnutrition.
To take part in the CSFP, women
and children must qualify for bene­fits
under an existing federal, state,
or local food, health, or welfare pro­gram
for low-income people. Some
state agencies also require that par­ticipants
be determined to be at nu­tritional
risk by a doctor or staff per­son
at the local agency.
Participating women and children
get prescribed food items, which
they pick up at a distribution facility.
They also receive instruction on
how to prepare the foods and prac­tical
lessons on nutrition.
The CSFP is currently operated by
25 local health agencies in 12 states.
· Volunteers can:
• Provide transportation to women
who need to get to clinics or food
distribution centers;
• Help with nutrition education;
• Help unload crates in the ware­houses
and take inventory of
supplies;
• Translate and interpret for appli­cants
with language difficulties.
Professional volunteers, such as
doctors and other qualified medical
personnel, can also help screen
applicants.
For more information, write:
Food and Nutrition Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Alexandria, Virginia 22302
Contributors to the issue:
The following people contributed
articles to this issue:
Pat Berkowitz
C. Kay Blakley
Phil Canuto
Tom Gregory
Christopher Kocsis
Ellen Lancaster
Victor Omelczenko
Brenda Schuler
Tino Serrano
Roy Siniard
Herb Strum
Joanne Widner
Photos by:
Dana Downie
David Lancaster
Larry Rana
Tino Serrano
Diana Sparks
Walter Uzzell
Mount Airy (N.C.) News
Gadsden County Times
Editor's Note:
Beginning in January 1983, we will
be publishing Food and Nutrition
quarterly: in January, April, July,
and October. Subscription prices
will change accordingly. See back
cover for price information.
23
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE I II II I
Division of Public Documents, Washington , DC 20402
Official Business iiiU.iiiiS.iiiMAI_.L (•)
Penalty for Private Use $300
Published four times a year by the
Food and Nutrition Service, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Washing­ton,
D.C. 20250.
John R. Block
Secretary of Agriculture
Mary C. Jarratt
Assistant Secretary
Samuel J. Cornelius
Administrator
Food and Nutrition Service
Jan Kern, Editor
Jan Proctor, Art Director
(o)}bod.
~Nutrition
Yearly subscription: $7.50 domestic,
$9.40 foreign. Single copies: $2.75
domestic, $3.45 foreign. Send sub­scription
orders to: Superintendent
of Documents, Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
These prices are subject to change
without notice by the Government
Printing Office.
The Secretary of Agriculture has de­termined
that the publication of this
periodical is necessary in the trans­action
of the public business re­quired
by law of this Department.
The use of funds for printing this
publication was approved by the Di­rector
of the Office of Management
and Budget March 31, 1982.
Postage and Fees Paid
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from Photo Library, U.S. Depart­ment
of Agriculture, Washington,
D.C. 20250.
Reference to commercial products
and services does not imply endorse­ment
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of Agriculture.
All programs of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture are available to every­one
without regard to race, creed,
color, sex or national origin.
Food and Nutrition is a magazine of are $9.40. To subscribe, mail a
the U.S. Department of Agriculture. check or money order, payable to
In it you'll find articles on the family the Superintendent of Documents,
food assistance and child nutrition to the following address: Superin-programs
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Food and Nutrition Service in coop- Printing Office, Washtrigto'n,· D. G.
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