Community Corner
Dunwoody Celebrates Food Day 2011
Malachi's Receives Large, Unexpected Donation of Fruits, Vegetables; Community Garden on County Tour Today
Malachi's Storehouse, an all-volunteer outreach ministry of Saint Patrick's Episcopal Church on North Peachtree Road, celebrated Food Day 2011 a few days early this year.
Food Day is officially today, Monday, Oct. 24 but is being celebrated throughout the week with numerous events across the nation and DeKalb County.
Last Tuesday Malachi's got a head start on these activities when volunteers Kathy Malcolm Hall and Mary Louise Wilson received a call from the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB).
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The food bank had received an enormous donation of fruits and vegetables from a produce convention at the Georgia World Congress Center. ACFB in turn contacted a number of food pantries, including Malachi's, to offer them the food so they could distribute it to people in need.
Malachi's gives food to approximately 400 people a week -- 90 families with an average of 4.5 people per family. Kathy and Mary Louise wasted no time in rushing to the ACFB to pick up the amazing bounty. They returned to Saint Patrick's with numerous varieties of sweet and hot peppers, several kinds of tomatoes, grapes, apples, large aloe leaves, pomegranates and much, much more.
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To this extensive collection of fruits and vegetables, the Community Garden's added its weekly donation to Malachi's, 32 pounds. Most of that, 25 pounds, came from the Community Garden in Brook Run Park. The rest came from the Garden of Eatin' at Saint Patrick's. So far this year, the Community Garden has donated 2,915 pounds of produce with a total value of $14,575 to Malachi's.
Malachi's distributed the food from both sources on Wednesday.
Providing food to low-income families in Dunwoody meets one of six key principles on which Food Day was founded: Expand access to food and end hunger.
According to Food Day organizers, about 50 million Americans are "food insecure," or near hunger.
Some of the low-income people who rely on emergency food from pantries such as Malachi's Storehouse are among the approximately 11 percent of the poorest in America who live in what the Food Day website calls "food deserts" -- areas where people don't have cars and are beyond walking distance to the nearest grocery store. Fresh produce from Malachi's is sometimes the only fresh produce available to some of these families each week.
A recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that Americans generate an estimated 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. Sadly, all but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.
In addition to lessening hunger and creating access to food, another reason Food Day was created was to further knowledge and understanding about better nutrition.
Organizers modeled Food Day on Earth Day in the hope it will inspire Americans across the country to hold events in schools, colleges, houses of faith and even in private homes to increase awareness of issues with America's Food system.Β
Numerous events have been scheduled around the metro area to do just that. One of those is being held today in Dunwoody in Brook Run Park at the Community Garden, which donates 20 percent of its garden plots for charity.
The garden and greenhouse will be open from 2 to 6 p.m. as part of a county-wide urban agriculture and garden tour. Community garden volunteers will be available to answer questions about the garden's mission, membership in the garden and the principles of organic vegetable gardening.
If you haven't been to the Community Garden and seen the good things that are happening there, the volunteers would love to show you around. As they are fond of saying, it's past the dog park ... on the left ... where the sidewalk ends. Be sure to also visit the greenhouse, which ensures that the volunteers can make donations to Malachi's year-round.
A tour just may change the way you think about food. After all, isn't that what Food Day is really about?