Food Insecurity – Page 5 – From a Simmer to a Boil

A Pause for Reflection

April 23, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

The past few months have been a whirlwind. When I started out on this venture I wasn’t sure what to expect. I told myself just put one foot in front of the other and take baby steps. As the weeks have passed, I feel like the baby steps have become an all out gallop just to keep up with the volunteering, reading of articles and informational texts and writing this blog. Sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem of food insecurity and the little dent I am going to be able to make in alleviating hunger. Most days, however, I am motivated by the people I have encountered along the way and the response I have received to what little I have done so far.

I have been volunteering in two local food pantries for four months now. Volunteering in these pantries has educated me as to who is receiving emergency food services. The clients at the food pantries are young and old, male and female, of all races, and live in large households or alone. In other words they could be anyone, and I suspected as much before I started volunteering. I have also learned, however, that a majority of people who use emergency food services, like a food pantry, live in a household with at least one person in the workforce. In households where no one is working, it is often because members of the household are senior citizens or disabled. A disturbing number of Americans are not able to make ends meet even though they are working. Knowing that fact abstractly is one thing. Looking a person who is experiencing it in the eyes while helping her fill her food basket makes that fact very concrete.

I have also learned that no matter how hard these emergency food agencies try, gaps and shortfalls exist and will continue to exist when providing emergency food. When I started volunteering I thought that clients could come in whenever they needed food. Sometimes that would be every couple of months, but sometimes that might be twice in one month. This is not how emergency food works. Clients can only come in once every 30 days, which isn’t too bad. But here are some other things I have learned. Sometimes there is a waiting list for appointments two weeks long. Food pantries are only open a few days a week and sometimes only during the daytime when many people are at work. Sometimes clients can’t come when the pantry is open. Or sometimes clients can’t get a ride to the pantry. If they walk to the pantry they can only take what they can carry home. Sometimes the food items run low causing rationing, or run out all together.

Not everything I have witnessed from my volunteering experience has been so discouraging though. I have worked several jobs which involved serving the public and very seldom have I experienced such levels of appreciation from those I have served. Additionally, I have enjoyed the warm sense of community and commitment I have found among fellow emergency food volunteers. Providing assistance through emergency food agencies like food banks and pantries is not the answer to the food insecurity problem that I would like to see, but I do feel like through these pantries I am making an important difference in the lives people who need a helping hand and caring face. For now, that feeling sustains me, but also pushes me to keep striving for a better solution.

Similarly, I have been encouraged by the response to this blog. In the two and a half months that I have been writing posts, the number of people following the blog has risen to over 190 people. I have received very positive verbal feedback from several people as well as have had many posts be “liked” by fellow bloggers. Additionally, I have started to receive some comments on my posts and am beginning to see the formation of the online community I hope to foster. In that spirit, I would love to see the number of followers of this blog top 200 by the end of April. If you know someone who is interested in this topic, or even remotely related topics, like cooking or farming, please share this blog with them. Finally, I encourage you to participate in the conversation. Leave me a comment, share an insight, point me in a new direction!

Chicken in a Pot

March 31, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

As I mentioned in a previous post, my mother cooked dinner from scratch most nights. I came from a family of modest means and I understood that my mother cooking was one of the ways we saved money. I was taught that food was never to be wasted, so we ate leftovers. I learned that if you knew how to cook it properly, a cheaper, lesser cut of meat tasted wonderful and wasn’t tough. But cooking from scratch means more that just knowing how to prepare food. It means knowing how to plan meals, budget your time, make a grocery list and go shopping.

One of the best ways to get the most for your food dollar is to create a shopping list and stick to it. To make a shopping list, you would first need to create a meal plan so that you will know the ingredients you will need. When planning meals, it is important to consider what is on sale, what you already have on hand and what time you have available to cook during the week. Once you have a detailed grocery list you are ready to head to the grocery store.

It is easy to look at a grocery store’s sale circular or clip coupons and purchase the cheapest processed foods. You may feel you are getting the most food for your dollar and possibly you are getting more items, but at what cost? Mark Bittman wrote a good op-ed article in The New York Times, entitled Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?_r=0

In this essay he compares the cost of feeding a family of 4 at McDonald’s to the cost of feeding that same family a home cooked roasted chicken dinner. The home cooked meal is cheaper, and could cost even less if the meal was not as heavily meat based. Additionally, one must consider the hidden cost of eating heavily processed foods–obesity, diabetes and other diseases that accompany being overweight. What you save today, may cost you down the road in doctor’s bills and poor health.

To demonstrate how cooking from scratch stretches food dollars I will use a whole chicken versus a bag of chicken nuggets. The price of a whole chicken at my local grocery store was $1.29 per pound and the average chicken weighed 7 pounds, making the cost of the chicken roughly $9.00. The most economical bag of chicken nuggets I could find was $4.49 for a 1 pound, 11 ounce bag. You could by two bags for roughly the same $9.00.

One can assume the chicken will contain roughly 35% waste in the form of bones and excess fat deposits. Using that assumption, a 7 pound chicken will yield 4.55 pounds of meat, compared to 3.38 pounds of chicken nuggets from the two bags combined. Not only does the chicken produce over a pound more meat, but once the meat has been eaten off the bones they can be used to make a soup or chicken stock. Finally, the chicken meat is only chicken meat. The nuggets contain other ingredients than chicken, including added salt, sugar and fat. To illustrate the unhealthy result of the extra ingredients in the nuggets just look at the percentage of fat in the calories for each service size. For the brand of nuggets I used as my example, roughly 60% of the calories in the nuggets were fat calories, compared to roughly 40% for the roasted chicken with the skin. The percentage would be even lower without the skin.

Meal planning, creating a shopping list and cooking from scratch may seem time consuming and more difficult that microwaving some chicken nuggets, but they get easier with practice. The Environmental Working Group has a helpful pamphlet, entitled Good Food on a Tight Budget, free on their website

www.ewg.org/goodfood

or with a contribution you can receive a copy. The pamphlet provides numerous tips and tools for budgeting your food dollars, meal planning and shopping. It also contains recipes. Having a good all purpose cookbook is a must too. These cookbooks provide instructions for the basics like hard boiling an egg to more complicated recipes. They also contain information on meal planning, nutrition, shopping tips, cooking techniques and other helpful hints. The Joy of Cooking and the Fannie Farmer Cookbook are two examples of classic, all purpose cookbooks. How to Cook Everything is a more contemporary all purpose cookbook that includes numerous variations on recipes.

To make your food dollars stretch takes time and commitment. The key is to know your schedule. Try to find a block of time each week to look at your schedule and plan meals, basing that meal plan on the time you actually have to cook the meals. When you have a day or two where you are limited in meal preparation time, try to prepare items for those days’ meals ahead on a day off or when you just have more time.

For those who are food insecure and may never have cooked this way, attempting to cook from scratch is probably a scary prospect. What if something goes wrong in the cooking process and the food is ruined? They do not have the funds to just try again. In my final installment of this series I will present some ideas I would like to see offered through my local food pantries to help those needing assistance learn how to make the most of the food they receive from the food pantry. I know many of these ideas are currently offered at larger food banks, so if anyone has any experience with these ideas, positive or negative, I welcome the input.

Fuzzy Logic

March 5, 2015Jenifer2 Comments

One of the reasons I felt so compelled to act to help the food insecure is to combat the troubling attitude in the United States that people are in poverty through some fault of their own. Too often I hear, “What’s wrong with those people?” I guess the thought is that people are poor because they are lazy or have some other flaw causing their situation. Many Americans reason that if the poor only took responsibility for their lives or learned a good work ethic they could find work and their situation would change. All too often this set of beliefs is propagated by the media or our politicians.

My personal experience with those in poverty, however, is that most of them are at the point of needing assistance through no fault of their own. Many of them have lost a job or had to take a lower paying job. Several have been bankrupted by crippling medical bills. Then there are those who can not work–the elderly, disabled and children. The new face of poverty can be found in America’s suburbs where since 2000 the poverty rate has skyrocketed by 64 percent.

Believing that it is the poor’s fault that they are poor leads to further flawed thinking and myths. The other day a graphic showed up on my Facebook feed showing SNAP myths and realities. The realities seemed correct to me, but I decided to fact check them, since no sources were given. I found credible sources for all of the stated realities. According to the USDA, SNAP fraud is about 1% of benefits and this is an all time low, down from 4% over the last 15 years. My experience with people receiving SNAP benefits is that most who can work either are or are desperately looking for work, and this graph substantiates my experiences. The figure of 8-10 months that the average person receives SNAP benefits comes from USDA data. Finally, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, states that every dollar spent on SNAP benefits creates $1.76 in economic activity. He states that SNAP benefits are the fastest way to infuse cash into the economy because those benefits will get spent immediately and that spending will ripple into other sectors of the economy like paying clerks’ salaries.

The other night my family was watching the movie, Witness, from the early eighties, and depicted in this movie is an Amish barn raising. One of my sons turned to me and said, “See what can be accomplished when people work together.” He then asked, “Why don’t we (as a society) do that?” I didn’t have an answer for him. With regard to poverty, I think it might be easier to blame to the poor for their situation. To accept that they are in their situation due to circumstances beyond their control means that our system does not work. Since our system theoretically comes from the people in the form of voting, that puts some responsibility on us. We allowed the system to get broken and we are not doing all we can to fix it. It also means that maybe people in poverty aren’t too different than those of us who are not, suggesting we, too, could wind up in the same situation. That is a pretty scary thought for most people, so it is easier to believe that people in poverty are there because of something they did wrong.

Last summer I was listening to a Radio Times program about hunger in the suburbs. One of the guests being interviewed suggested that instead of looking at those in poverty and saying, “What’s wrong with those people?” we change our inner dialogue to, “What happened to them? What is their story?” I like that shift. Most people in poverty have a reason they find themselves in that situation. They are not in poverty because they are bad or lazy. If as a nation we can listen to the stories of the poor, we might come to understand their struggle and how we can help them, help themselves.

Homeless in Winter

February 24, 2015Jenifer2 Comments

In the past week in southeastern Pennsylvania it has snowed twice, once with a topping of freezing rain and sleet. Last Friday morning the temperature with the wind chill was between -10 and -15 degrees. The coldest weather this area has seen in 50+ years. This morning it was 1 degree without the wind chill. When people meet in public the topic is how cold it is and how ready everyone is for Spring to get here.

This morning at the food pantry I met Bill (not his real name). He is ready for Spring to come too. Bill is homeless and lives in a tent. He knows exactly how cold it has been and what type of precipitation has been falling from the sky. Twice his tent has collapsed on him from the weight of the snow. He has a kerosene heater, but no kerosene. Bill keeps warm with and cooks over an open fire. He has been given permission to “camp” within the patrolled area of a local food manufacturer’s property because his tent has been burglarized more than once. What little money he has, Bill makes from selling firewood, otherwise he has no income. He cleans a friend’s home in exchange for her driving him places and allowing him to store items, like eggs, in her refrigerator.

His homeless situation presented us with challenges in gathering his food. First we had to make sure he had gotten a ride, which he luckily had. Otherwise he could only take what he could carry. The other volunteer working with me today knew of Bill’s situation, so she knew he could only have cans and only ones with a pop tops. He needs cans because he can put them right in his fire to warm them and pop tops because his can opener has been stolen twice. The extreme temperatures make keeping liquids problematic for him. He does have a cooler but he said the water he had, had frozen solid the other day even in the cooler. In spite of these challenges, we were able to send Bill on his way with several items.

According to a Point-in-Time count conducted on January 29, 2014, 684 people were experiencing homelessness on that night here in Pennsylvania’s wealthiest county. Point-in-Time counts are used to help determine how many people are experiencing homeless on any given night in an area. This figure includes those in emergency shelters, transitional housing, receiving motel subsidies and, like Bill, unsheltered. Even if Bill had wanted to come in out of the cold, there are no shelters in our corner of this county. The nearest ones are 25-30 miles away.

I would have not been surprised if Bill had been bitter or angry, but he was not. He said he had too much to do to think about being cold, but he lingered with us as long as he could. It is forecast to be below average in temperature for at least the next week. Tonight, as I get into my bed with flannel sheets and three blankets, I will think about Bill and hope that he is okay. At least I know he won’t be hungry.

Who’s in the Pantry?

February 19, 2015February 19, 2015Jenifer2 Comments

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I have seen young and old, men and women and several different ethnic groups using the two food banks where I volunteer. I now want to try and flesh out how many people are using food pantries and some of the reasons they find themselves there. I will mostly be using statistics from Pennsylvania and/or the county in which I live.

According to statistics from the USDA, 49.1 million Americans, or 14.3%, live in a food insecure household. These residents do not consistently have access to the necessary food needed to lead an active, healthy life. Pennsylvania’s food insecurity rate falls below the national average. State of Hunger: Pennsylvania 2013, a document prepared by the Coalition Against Hunger, states that 1.6 million Pennsylvania residents, or 1 in 8, are food insecure. In my county the food insecurity rate is 10% in general and 14% for children. While not everyone who is food insecure uses a food pantry or soup kitchen, the State of Hunger: Pennsylvania 2013 report states that 105,044 county residents (503,897 total county population) participated in the State Food Purchase Program which provides food to charities, like food pantries, who help feed low income residents.

That’s a lot of people. Each person who uses a food pantry has his or her own personal story of how they became food insecure. Most clients of a food pantry come because they have little choice. For many, they only go to the food pantry when their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have run out. According to the USDA, the average monthly household SNAP benefit for Pennsylvania residents in 2014 was $241.05. This benefit amount has declined every year in Pennsylvania since 2011 and it is projected to decline even more in 2015. When those meager dollars run out, many turn to the local food pantry to help close the gap. While volunteering, I have noticed it is busier at the end of the month than it is at the beginning when SNAP benefits are distributed.

With the cuts in SNAP benefits, less and less people qualify for the program. In my county, 25,614 residents participated in SNAP in April 2014 or 5% of the county population. The county’s food insecurity rate is 10%, meaning that approximately half of the county’s food insecure are not receiving benefits. Currently to qualify for SNAP benefits your gross monthly income needs to be at or below 130% of poverty. It is accepted, however, that families need an income at or above 200% of poverty just to make ends meet. As you can see, there is a huge gap between the income that qualifies someone for SNAP benefits and what that person really needs to survive. People falling into that gap are certainly coming to the food pantry.

If all these numbers and words don’t help you put a face on who is using food banks, I encourage you to watch a powerful documentary called A Place at the Table. A companion book by the same name was also published. This movie focuses on the experiences of three Americans struggling with food insecurity. You can stream it live from Amazon Prime or Netflix.

Two things stuck with me from this movie. The first is the following quote from Jeff Bridges.

35 million people in the U.S. are hungry or don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and 13 million of them are children. If another country were doing this to our children, we’d be at war.

The second item that has stayed with me is the fact that we almost ended hunger in America in the recent past. In 1969 President Nixon declared war on hunger and called for governmental action to end hunger in America. In response funding was increased for existing programs and new programs, like the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), were created. Within a decade hunger in the United States was almost eradicated.

We have tackled this problem before and almost succeeded. I am saddened that we have allowed so much ground to be lost over the last few decades, but I also have hope that Americans can once again rise to the challenge and eliminate hunger in the United States. I choose to focus on that hope.

What’s in the pantry?

February 18, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

In 1980 200 food banks existed in the entire United States. Today there are over 40,000 food banks, pantries and soup kitchens. With all the recent cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called the Food Stamp Program) food banks are doing the heavy lifting in ensuring those who are hungry get the food they need. Food banks were once considered a place to turn in an emergency, for a little while. Now they are a necessity to many. So how do food banks work?

Individual food banks are often networked together with other food banks and coordinated at the county or state level. State and Federal resources are then funneled from the parent organization to each food pantry in the network. The individual food banks serve local areas often defined by a local government jurisdiction or school district boundaries. They have set hours each week when clients can come get their food. Clients are allowed to come once a month to receive a full allotment of groceries, but often the pantry will allow clients to come weekly to get donated bread/baked goods and perishable items like fresh produce when available.

Most of the food at food banks comes not from donations, but from State and Federal food distribution programs. The Federal program, The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), provides USDA purchased commodities and has been in existence since 1981. The State Food Purchase Program supplements TEFAP by providing funds to food agencies. These agencies buy food in bulk and then distribute it to the food banks in their network. These two programs provide the majority of food distributed by food pantries.

Food banks and pantries, however, receive food other ways. Who hasn’t given a donation to a local organization sponsoring a food drive. I have sent food in to my kids’ schools and every year a Boy Scout troop distributes empty bags in our neighborhood one week and comes back to collect the filled bags the next week. Right now (not long after the winter holidays) one food pantry in which I volunteer is still sorting through boxes of food donated during the holidays.

Both of the food pantries I am familiar with get large weekly donations of bread/bakery products. A staff member at one pantry goes to a local grocery store and takes all the bakery items the store can no longer sell and was going to throw away. The other pantry has a volunteer who picks up similarly expired bread products from a local chain restaurant that specializes in sandwiches. In both pantries these items are frozen to be distributed to clients through the week.

Food banks and pantries have learned to capitalize on what is unique or abundant in their area. For instance here in rural Pennsylvania, we have many farmers. In the summer when produce is plentiful, sometimes too plentiful (zucchini again?!) farmers can donate their extra produce to the food bank. In addition to taking donations of produce, the main county food bank has partnered with local farmers who grow produce for the county food bank network. That produce is then distributed to the food banks in the network who are able to take it. Additionally, food pantries that have the land available grow their own produce in garden plots and/or raised beds.

Finally, living in rural Pennsylvania there are many hunters and many more deer. Our county food bank participates in a statewide program called Hunters Sharing the Harvest. Hunters can donate their deer to a participating butcher for processing. The food bank picks up the processed venison and distributes it to the participating local pantries. I think this is a great win win situation–hunters are helping those in need and controlling the deer population.

Here are some links to websites I found helpful and informative

Feeding America http://www.feedingamerica.org
Chester County Food Bank http://www.chestercountyfoodbank.org
Hunters Sharing the Harvest http://www.sharedeer.org
Coalition Against Hunger http://www.hungercoalition.org
State of Hunger http://www.hungerreportpa.com

I encourage you to take a look at what is happening in your area. Is there a way you can help? Often food banks have a list of items most needed. Next time you donate to a food drive, find out what is most needed. I’d love to hear of any innovative programs offered by other food banks.

Volunteering

February 13, 2015February 13, 2015Jenifer2 Comments

For the past month, weather permitting, I have been volunteering in two local food pantries. They serve our area and are part of the larger county food bank network. The setting for each pantry is different. One is affiliated with a church and the food pantry is the only service provided at that building. It is also on the outskirts of town, so most clients arrive in a car. The other is located in a building that houses other social services. It is located in town and many clients walk to the pantry.

Each of the food pantries has its own mix of clientele, but all walks of life are represented. There are large families, usually multiple generations living in one house and clients who live alone. There are children and senior citizens. There are Hispanics, Caucasians, and African Americans. There are those who are disabled and the able bodied. In many households someone is suffering from an ailment, sometimes something chronic like diabetes, sometimes just a virus or the flu. Except for those with disabilities or who have retired, at least one person in most households was employed. Those who were unemployed were looking. One client even asked me if I knew anybody who was hiring.

My primary task is to assist clients with getting their food. The food in each pantry is similar, often identical, because most of it comes from the same agencies. The differences that exist are due to what each pantry orders to serve its unique clientele and the donated items it receives. There are guidelines about what and how much clients can take, but clients also have some input in what they receive. More often than I expected they do not take all to which they are entitled. Most only take what they need right then. Additionally, several clients I encountered came only when they were truly running short on food. In other words, they do not make appointments to come when they do not need the extra assistance, even though they would still qualify to receive that assistance.

Many of the clients initially seemed wary of me, probably because I am a new face. I imagine being there is not easy for them. One of the other volunteers told me that when clients sign up to use the food pantry, particularly for the first time ever, they always cry. I try to do whatever I can to put them at ease. I look them directly in the eye and smile. I make small talk, no talk or offer a handshake. I try to catch their name so I can address them properly.

The manner in which I complete my tasks at each of these two food pantries has been different, due to the constraints of each location. What has not been different is what I take away each time I have volunteered. I always feel that warm feeling you get in your heart when you help someone else, but there is more. I also feel inspired by the manner in which these individuals meet the adversities in their lives. With each encounter I have I learn more about the reasons people find themselves at a food pantry. Consequently, I find myself more committed than ever to this endeavor.

Giving Thanks

February 9, 2015February 9, 2015JeniferLeave a comment

Most people who are passionate about an issue have an event or experience they can point to, that changed the way they thought about the topic. For me that event happened in November 1999. At the time I was working as the librarian at a vocational school near Oakland, CA. Most of our students were women. A lot of them were single parents and many of them were just getting by. The vocational school was rather small and had a wonderful tradition at Thanksgiving. The director of each of program was asked to choose one student most in need of a free Thanksgiving meal. From these six students, one student would be chosen to receive a Thanksgiving meal–a turkey and all the fixings–from the school. To prevent the student from feeling self conscious about his or her situation, the student was told that s/he had won a drawing out of all the students’ names in the school.

I thought this was a nice tradition and listened as the directors tried to decide which one of their students each would nominate. All of them admitted it was a difficult decision to make as several of their students were deserving. I had several conversations with the Director of the Dental Assisting program who that particular year had a very easy choice to make. The student she was nominating was a woman in her early twenties. She was the single parent of a young child and was struggling to turn her life around. She was a good student, who gave her all, but financially was barely surviving. I knew the student. She was always smiling and upbeat. The last day of classes before Thanksgiving break that Director stopped by the library to let me know that her student had been selected to receive the Thanksgiving dinner.

I had another memorable visitor stop by the library that day to wish me a happy Thanksgiving and to let me know, with a big smile on her face, that she had won the “drawing” for the Thanksgiving dinner. She was so happy, she told me, because she and her child had just eaten the last of their white rice for breakfast and they didn’t have any other food, nor did she know where they would get any more food until the first of December when her food stamps (now SNAP) would come. I’m pretty sure the smile on my face froze. I know my heart jumped up in my throat and I hope a tear did not spring to my eye.

Several thoughts hit me at once. Thanksgiving fell on November 25th in 1999. So my first thought was how many more days were left in the month before the first of December. Since this was Wednesday, November 24th, December 1st was still a week away. I could not fathom not knowing where the food for my next meal would come from, let alone where I would get food for the next week.

The next thought I had centered on what she and her child had for their last meal. Plain white rice. Not white rice with milk, brown sugar and cinnamon, like I sometimes had for breakfast when I was a child, but just plain white rice. No fruit, no flavoring, not much nutrition. I was so happy this woman and child would have a flavorful, nutritious meal for Thanksgiving, and probably several days afterward.

I don’t remember that student’s name and her face is a blurry memory, but I will never forget her story. That Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving since I have thought about her and her child. She completed the program, and I hope with all my heart that she has turned her life around and has never had to approach another Thanksgiving wondering where her meal would come from.

That was my first significant encounter with the hardships of food insecurity. It opened my eyes and made me aware of how little some in this country have. What encounters have you had with food insecurity?

Jumping in with both feet

February 5, 2015Jenifer2 Comments

I have done it! Over the past couple of years it has become increasingly important to me to find time in my life to become involved in efforts to assist those experiencing food insecurity, particularly in my own community. So I said good bye to my job and reorganized some of my household responsibilities to find the time to pursue this endeavor.

I started by doing a bit of research on the topic of food insecurity in America. While I wanted to understand the problem nationally, I wanted to focus my help locally. I looked around in my own community to determine what assistance was available for those without enough food. I discovered two food pantries and I have contacted them about volunteering my time. In addition to helping immediately by volunteering with existing programs, I want understand where gaps in the assistance that is currently provided exist and propose solutions to fill some of those gaps.

To assist with that goal I have started this blog. With this blog I hope to connect with others who are similarly concerned about food insecurity. These folks might be running a program helping people get the food they need. Maybe they, themselves are experiencing food insecurity or know someone who is. Or maybe, like me, they are just someone who has reached the boiling point and said enough.

In addition to a chronicle of my experiences, I hope this blog will become an exchange of ideas. A place where others can offer suggestions and insight. I want to know what has been successful as well as what didn’t succeed and why. I welcome all points of view as long as they are presented respectfully. If you have made it this far and you are still reading, I hope you will join me. I believe that when people work collectively, great things are possible.