Real Food America

[Penni]

In today's video I share with you my heart and desire for helping to bring real food to low income Americans, along with Paul Risse of Cleanse America, Jacqueline Corbett & Andrew Heinz of the RawFoodNetwork.com and many others who have also shared similar desires and visions in yesterday's Facebook interaction. If this topic is intriguing to you, please click here to view the dialog as it unfolded.

Jacqueline has done a fantastic job of bringing details of what's happening on a smaller scale together and you can find her information by clicking here.  We hope to keep adding to this list of organizations, so please share your information with us in the comments below.

We really want to hear from you and have your thoughts and perspectives added into the mix. I realize that this is a very big picture concept,  but one that I believe we need to see come together.  With much community support, divine guidance and the right people in place, I can visualize it all flowing together to impact the health and food systems in our nation (and beyond!).  Thank you in advance for your input, information and for sharing from your heart. I look forward to getting this dialog started!

[Tasia]

What about feedingamerica.org or foodpantries.org or ampleharvest.org? I am Canadian, so Iam not sure if these organizations are what you're looking for.

[EmmaJune]

http://www.opsacklunch.org/

Penni this is an organization in Seattle, WA that serves ethical and organic meals to the hungry. They prepare nutritious meals and transport them to the streets to people that would otherwise do without. My niece has helped serve food here as part of her youth groups outreach. When she wrote about it in her college essay I became familiar with the organization.

It's mission is what you are talking about - bringing " real food to low income Americans". Check it out!!!

[Veganista]

Ok, so after I read almost every comment (left off at page 5) I have a better understanding. :-) Ok, so I will post the links from my area probably tomorrow since I'm about to go to bed. An ideas I had for a name is "I'm Worth It!" maybe Movement at the end or something of that nature. That way people don't look at this movement as they don't know any better educational wise or even common sense wise; but they begin to internalize their self worth. They are worth REAL FOOD. They are worth the government pitching in, the "big names" that support, the education to better themselves, the nutritional value of fresh food, the overcoming of "food injustice" and so on. So it isn't just a join the band wagon deal, it's empowering and motivating to be worth other things in life as well.

So that was just me going off the top of my head. Also, I don't know if it has been said, but once we get ready to move this to the national political arena, we can use www.change.org to push out petitions to have several thousand hopefully million people respond to force our nat'l government to do better for nutrition. The First Lady is already about better nutrition and health for America, she'd probably be all about it. The President too since he is actively trying to better the situation with the farmers. We could certainly write a letter to the President to assist in our effort!

I'll get those links in when I can. This is so exciting!

Good night RFR

[Brittney Hibbitts]

Beautiful. This is such a worth while vision and I look forward to seeing many great things come of it. 

[Renee Rubio]

here's my dream in writing, as suggested by Jacqueline Corbett, regarding this matter, and as I told her I would do http://thechicanextdoor.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/a-post-powered-by-...

[Chana Schwartz]

I think this is a great idea and excellent for helping those people in need.  I wish I could influence people to follow my success in weight loss after all that I have been learning on this site for almost two years now.  I wonder how I could help here?  I also have a friend that could barely afford to live everyday on the money he receives from the government.  I wish he would listen to my husband about getting food stamps.  Everything he fights us on.

Chana

[Heather L.O.V.E.]

I so LOVE this idea, Penni!  In fact, it has been a dream of mine to have a "FRESH Food Bank"--exactly like the regular food bank essentially except that all the food is fresh and the people can come several times a week (since produce is perishable.)  My mom volunteers for the food pantry at her church and she got them to replace a big lawn (that was costing a lot of money to maintain) with  a big organic garden that church members tend and food is given to whomever needs it.  I think this idea is going to catch fire.  I would love to see a big organic garden at every school in America.  Wouldn't that be awesome?  

(I have to say, though, that I do believe in fighting Monsanto.  It has been shown over and over that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.  If we don't stop them before they alter every food crop, we won't have the option to eat organic, because it will all be corrupted.  At the VERY LEAST, I think anything GMO should be labeled.  People have the right to know what they are eating!)

Love you so much Penni and your beautiful, generous heart.  We can do this!  Let's feed America real food!

[Penni]

I agree on fighting Monsanto too - I'm all about taking a stand on this.  I think what I was trying to say was that if people would take a bit of that output of coming against and shift it to creating solutions for - we could REALLY begin to see things take shape.  There is so much work to be done on all of this - but I feel things shifting and the tide IS turning!!

Heather L.O.V.E. said:

I so LOVE this idea, Penni!  In fact, it has been a dream of mine to have a "FRESH Food Bank"--exactly like the regular food bank essentially except that all the food is fresh and the people can come several times a week (since produce is perishable.)  My mom volunteers for the food pantry at her church and she got them to replace a big lawn (that was costing a lot of money to maintain) with  a big organic garden that church members tend and food is given to whomever needs it.  I think this idea is going to catch fire.  I would love to see a big organic garden at every school in America.  Wouldn't that be awesome?  

(I have to say, though, that I do believe in fighting Monsanto.  It has been shown over and over that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.  If we don't stop them before they alter every food crop, we won't have the option to eat organic, because it will all be corrupted.  At the VERY LEAST, I think anything GMO should be labeled.  People have the right to know what they are eating!)

Love you so much Penni and your beautiful, generous heart.  We can do this!  Let's feed America real food!

[Joe the raw christian]

I believe feedthechildren.org feeds entire families despite their name. I supported them in the past b4 I lost my previous job. Breakthrough.org also feeds people although alot of their focus is outside the usa.

[Penni]

Yes - these are great organizations, but they mainly only offer pre-packed and canned foods.  We're hoping to bring more real food (produce) to the needy. Thanks so much for sharing these links!

Joe the raw christian said:

I believe feedthechildren.org feeds entire families despite their name. I supported them in the past b4 I lost my previous job. Breakthrough.org also feeds people although alot of their focus is outside the usa.

[indigo]

Penni, here's a link to all the things our area food bank is involved in.  There's a fresh food service as well as a garden project.  I think these things must exist outside of central Texas.  You might try doing searches with the names of the different programs to see if anything comes up.

One of the things I read in "All You Can Eat" is that the logistics are pretty daunting.  Private, non-profit organizations aren't really set up to work on a national level.  I really wonder if this project might work more realistically as an umbrella of support for smaller local groups?

[Penni]

This is what I have in mind, if there is not already an organization doing this very thing.

indigo said:

..........  I really wonder if this project might work more realistically as an umbrella of support for smaller local groups?