The Feed People Project

… we’re starting fresh.

Due to a foolish Wordpress upgrade gone awry, I lost a year’s worth of writing on and about the problem of food insecurity here at home – and why we should care to do something about it. I’m most sad to lose what I consider stepping stones towards a philosophy that makes a lot of sense. The silver lining on this is that the philosophy is still there… and now at least Wordpress is updated.

Good news – We’ve been delivering 4.5 gallons of healthy, home-made nutritious soup per week to the homeless shelter at 150 Otis St in San Francisco for over a year now. In that time, I think we may have missed 4-5 Wednedsay deliveries due to holiday absence or illness. This last week was one of them, as both the Soup Lady (my mom, Shelley Johnson) and I were floored by wicked cold. It’s soup-er (sorry.. couldn’t resist) contageous and we thought it a bad idea to make soup and distribute it to a bunch of people who are probably potentially immuno-challenged.

To recap some of the main points that we’d like to demonstrate by continuing to do this project:

- Food insecurity (hunger) is debilitating to society. A Harvard School of Public Healthy study showed that the estimated cost burden on society from this dysfunction is $90B a year – through costs taken on by our health care, education and economic institutions.

- Food insecurity is not just a problem in Africa. It’s extremely prevalent here… with almost 10% of households in America not able to secure food every day (according to prevalent statistics.. try feedingamerica.org).

- We can easily do something about it. Through the application of just a handful of hours or the cost of a few drinks a week, each of us can help one other person survive. That’s exactly how the economics worked out for the Soup Lady Project, in fact – for what amounts to $30/week (for me) and a good 5-6 hours of work (for my mom) we each are responsible for more than 1,000 servings a year. Multiply 3 servings a day times 365 days a year and tell me what you get. Exactly.

The Soup Lady Project is simple. You find someone with time who likes to cook. You find someone with money who cares. You buy healthy ingredients with the money. You cook some food, realizing economy of scale by sizing to feed a group. Then you deliver it. You stay consistent. Over time, you become part of the solution to a simple, foundational problem that plagues our society.

What you cook is up to you. We chose soup for a few reasons. First, my mom always talked about cooking soup for low income people when she retired.. and then she retired. Second, it’s a very economical meal with substance, variety and the ability to mix and match ingredients. Finally, at a time when we have such difficult economic conditions, a little reminder of the soup lines that got us by back then might help drive us towards what we need to be doing now – pitching in to help each other out. It literally is the least we can do.

I’ve written enough for today. Just wanted to get the site back up after our technical difficulties. Look for more improvements and writing to come. I’ll update the stat tracker and publish it again.

As always, comments and/or questions are welcome.

cheers,

- Stefan