On 7/21/2020, John Tindall (Director of Volunteer Services for the Montgomery County Foodbank) spoke to the membership of the Magnolia Rotary Club about his organization and how we can help. Pictured above is John Tindall.
Hope Moye opened the meeting by explaining that multi district rotary training has been scheduled for Saturday, August 1, 2020 by the Rotary Multi District Training Institute. This program will be held live via Zoom from 8:30 am - 8:30 pm with 3 Plenary sessions plus Concurrent training paths for District Chairs (& their committees) focused on: Foundation, Membership, Public Image, Rotary Youth Exchange, Rotaract, and District Trainers. Click the registration links for the various sessions to see speakers and details. Contact Bunny Pratt with any questions. For more information please visit the District 5910 web site (https://rotary5910.org/event/the-rotary-multi-district-training-institute/). Information about Interact Training is also available on the main page.
Mr. John Tindall provided a short slideshow about the Montgomery County Food Bank (MCFB) organization after explaining that he himself started out as a volunteer and is now a director in the organization. He also pointed out that the organization is all about fighting hunger and feeding hope. John's told everyone he can be contacted via email at jtindall@mcfoodbank.org
John told everyone that there are 3 social issues that the MCFB is always working to fix:
1. Food Insecurity
- The state of being without reliable access to enough nutritious food.
- The number of people in this state in Montgomery County is 73,710 and nearly 40% of those are children under the age of 17.
- John showed a photo (below) of a football stadium in order to give a visualization as too how many people that would look like.
2. Food Waste
- 40% of all food produced is wasted
- There is enough food for everyone to have 2000 nutritious calories per day.
- Food waste causes greenhouses gases.
- John showed a slide (below) that showed relative size of the food waste.
- In Montgomery County (thanks to MCFB) a great deal of unwanted food is given to the MCFB volunteers and agency partners who then provide the means to distribute it to hungry people.
3. Feeding People and Reducing Waste
- 8.2 million meals distributed last year.
- 44% of the food distributed was fresh produce.
- Over 13 million pounds of food kept from the landfill by MCFB.
- Demand expected to increase by 40% in the near future.
- Due to COVID-19 many older "at risk" volunteers can no longer help.
John then told everyone some of the things they could do to help the MCMB:
- Give: Summer Match Program doubles your donation.
- Be part of MCFB's Shoot Out Hunger Tournament on Friday, September 11, 2020.
- Volunteer at: mcfoodbank.volunteerhub.com.
- John pointed out that working as a volunteer is relatively safe as all CDC Guidelines for COVID-19 are followed (including face masks & social distancing).
- Share their mission. The MCFB's website is: https://mcfoodbank.org/
A photo of those in attendance can be seen below:
