plus 4, Hospital appeals to government for assistance - Joy Online

Hospital appeals to government for assistance - Joy Online
News from Everest-area schools - Wausau Daily Herald
Food banks nationwide report more 1st timers - Gather.com
Food banks go high-tech to feed the hungry - News-Courier
American charities may not have a happy holiday - Associated Press

Hospital appeals to government for assistance - Joy Online

Posted: 27 Nov 2009 07:48 AM PST

The Medical Superintendent of the Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Kumasi, Dr Annie Opoku, has appealed to government for assistance for the facility to enable it to provide efficient services.

According to him, the health centre needs additional 40 hospital beds, a theatre block with maternal and baby Unit, blood bank, modern x-ray machine and an ambulance.

Dr Opoku was speaking at the inauguration of a GH¢6,000 mechanized borehole for the hospital, in Kumasi on Thursday.

The project was initiated by a former Chief Executive of Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly, Lieutenant Colonel (rtd) Opuni Mensah and funded by a French student, Miss Rainbow Planche, with support from her family.

She commended benefactors of the project, saying it would help end the perennial water shortage at the hospital

Dr Kwesi Awudzi Yeboah, Kumasi Metropolitan Director of Ghana Health Service (GHS), said the provision of potable water would help reduce child mortality and morbidity at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Mrs Theresa Otuo Acheampong, Deputy Director of Nursing at Ashanti Regional Administration of GHS, called on individuals and non-governmental organizations to support health centres to enable them provide good quality health care.

Source: GNA

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News from Everest-area schools - Wausau Daily Herald

Posted: 27 Nov 2009 08:02 AM PST

D.C. Everest Senior High The business of right and wrong

Business ethics have been in the spotlight for much of the past decade, especially as examples of wrong-doing come to light in the media.

New technologies and international competitive pressures cause a steady focus on the question, "Is it possible today to be competitively successful in business and still operate in an honest and ethical manner?" Many college degrees now require a course or more in ethics.

On Nov. 12, volunteers from the business community spent time in the business classes at D.C. Everest Senior High School to help students understand ethics. This was done through Junior Achievement on the day designated as "Excellence through Ethics Day."

The day is set aside to encourage students' ethical decision-making as they prepare to enter the workforce and take part in the global marketplace. JA volunteers from River Valley State Bank, CoVantage Credit Union, Bradley Whalen Financial Services, Lewis Construction and other local places spent time in the classroom exploring ethics with business students. They discussed good character, commitment, moral values and decision-making.

Activities included evaluating business situations and deciding what would be good choices. Each of the volunteers was able to explain real life examples of situations that they had experienced. Students also evaluated their own personal ethics on a questionnaire prior to the visit.

Students who participated in this JA activity are eligible for scholarships. The Pam and Les Muma Scholarship awards $5,000 for four years to every year to students involved in JA.

Elementary

Evergreen Optimists deliver dictionaries

Each year, members of the Everest Area Optimist Club visit Evergreen Elementary School to present dictionaries to each third-grade student.

This year, Dean Koepke and Doug Palmer visited the school to speak with students about information that can be found in their dictionaries, including words, meanings, pronunciations, maps, list of presidents, branches of government and weights and measures. The students also learned the definition of optimism.

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Food banks nationwide report more 1st timers - Gather.com

Posted: 27 Nov 2009 07:55 AM PST

CHICAGO (AP) — Prentice Jones worked construction jobs around Chicago for most of his 60 years and is quick to boast of a foreman job he once held at a revamped city college and 23 years at a steel company.

But these days, work has been so scarce that the man with a penchant for cowboy hats has been forced to move in with his mother and do something this week he never expected — visit a food pantry.

"There's no work now," Jones said while waiting in line at St. Columbanus Parish for a frozen turkey and bags of apples, bread and potatoes. "I pray it's temporary."

A surge in first time visitors has contributed to the greatest demand in years at food banks nationwide, according to Feeding America, a Chicago-based national food bank association. Many of the first timers were middle class but lost jobs or had their wages cut.

"They were doing pretty well," said Ross Fraser of Feeding America. "They've completely had the rug pulled out from under them."

Federal agencies and national organizations have just started tracking first timers. But anecdotal evidence and statistics from individual pantries is clear: More and more new faces are appearing among the approximately 25 million Americans who rely on food pantries each year.

St. Columbanus Pantry, which serves about 500 people a week on Chicago's South Side, has had up to 50 new people sign up each week since February.

The Friendly Center in Orange, Calif., serves 80 families a day, with about 20 new people trying to qualify each day, far more than last year.

And at the Community Kitchen and Food Pantry of West Harlem, N.Y., about 250 of the 1,000 people who show up each day — up from 750 this time last year — are newcomers.

"The line has grown so long that when you walk outside, it's overwhelming," said Jesse Taylor, senior director at the pantry. "A lot of people are coming out in suits, they're carrying brief cases."

Food banks across the country report about a 30 percent increase in demand on average, but some have seen as much as a 150 percent jump in demand from 2008 through the middle of this year, according to Feeding America.

Reliance on food banks and the number of Americans using food stamps — at least 35 million currently — are two indicators of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said earlier this month that 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households, struggle to put food on the table, the most since the agency began tracking food security levels in 1995.

First timers to food banks have worries others might not experience.

For starters, they may not know what to do.

"Some don't have the coping skills, they've never been in this situation," said Elizabeth Donovan, a director at the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which serves 13 counties. "Asking for help is difficult."

Jones was cajoled into coming into the food pantry by a friend who knew where to go, where to wait and how to apply for services.

But others say the experience is fraught with shame, confusion or anger.

"We're hearing from more and more middle class who have never in their life gone to a food pantry," said Diane Doherty, an executive director at the Illinois Hunger Coalition. "They're very, very frustrated and angry."

About half of the almost 40,000 families who have been fed at Holy Family Food Pantry in Waukegan, Ill., about 40 miles north of Chicago, are new, services director Barb Karacic said.

They include Gail Small, a 55-year-old school bus driver who got laid off from her $16 an hour job at the Waukegan Public School District earlier in the year and hasn't been able to find work since.

"It was very embarrassing," Small said. "I didn't tell my children. I didn't tell my dad."

Others say at some point, the need to survive trumps emotions.

Linda Herrera, 59, went to All Saints Parish on Detroit's southwest side for the first time this week. Herrera, who is on state assistance, said the embarrassment of having to pick up food was offset by her empty cupboards.

"We were down to practically nothing," she said, carrying out bags containing juice, mashed potatoes, dried milk, rice and beans. "I'm trying to just make it now 'til the end of the month, until I get my check."

___

Associated Press Writer Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.

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Food banks go high-tech to feed the hungry - News-Courier

Posted: 27 Nov 2009 06:57 AM PST

Published November 27, 2009 09:22 am - Food banks across the country are undergoing a high-tech revolution, adopting sophisticated databases, bar coding, GPS tracking, automated warehouses and other technologies used in the food industry that increasingly supplies their goods.
It's a long way from handing out macaroni and canned soup from a church basement.

Food banks go high-tech to feed the hungry

Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — Food banks across the country are undergoing a high-tech revolution, adopting sophisticated databases, bar coding, GPS tracking, automated warehouses and other technologies used in the food industry that increasingly supplies their goods.

It's a long way from handing out macaroni and canned soup from a church basement.

While more people can be fed through these innovations, food bank directors say it's also a sad acknowledgment that hunger has become a huge and seemingly unending problem.

"What we tell people a lot is that we are a food distribution business wrapped in an altruistic skin," says Jan Pruitt, president and CEO of the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas.

Her food bank, along with Food Lifeline in Seattle and the Food Bank of Central New York in East Syracuse, are testing a $60 million effort by Feeding America, an umbrella organization for about 200 U.S. food banks, to create a state-of-the-art national computer network that will greatly automate services.

The Athena Project, which started rolling out this summer, will let food banks upgrade and standardize accounting, inventory and donor software, take full advantage of the Internet, and manage pickups and deliveries much the same way FedEx or UPS track packages. Chicago-based Feeding America is installing the systems at no charge and separately from its operating budget, thanks in part to financial and in-kind donations, says Kevin Lutz, vice president for technology.

For local pantries and kitchens — and the people at their doors — it should mean more food and the kind they actually like and need, Pruitt and others say. Donors, from agribusinesses to the 10-year-old collecting cans at a birthday party, can be assured that less is being spent on overhead and more on helping the hungry.

"We are going to gain so much efficiency," says Linda Nageotte, Food Lifeline's president and CEO. "We're going to be able to provide so much better accountability, and this also really increases our credibility."

Lutz says that when the project is completed in five years, it could save food banks up to four times its $60 million cost — money that could go toward food and other services.

Since the first food bank, St. Mary's in Phoenix, opened in 1967, many in the movement hoped they would soon work themselves out of business, Pruitt said. Instead, most agencies have become mainstays of their communities, supplying tons of food to pantries, soup kitchens and other local programs.

"In 1982, when this food bank opened, their first year of distribution was 400,000 pounds," Pruitt said, of her Dallas-based organization. "We now do that in one day."

The recession has only made things worse. Pruitt estimates food demand in her area has grown by a third in the past year. Nationally, Feeding America says the 63,000 local agencies served by its food banks aid more than 25 million people annually.

Without the new technology, "We just simply couldn't do what we do," says Carol Schneider, spokeswoman for the Food Bank For New York City.

In 2002, the food bank, which handles about 60 million pounds of food each year, replaced its paper system with a bar code system and wireless network at its 90,000 square-foot warehouse in the Bronx.

Food banks are trying to provide more fresh meat and produce, much of it gathered unsold from supermarkets. Pruitt says that means her 17 trucks have to quickly reach 126 individual stores in addition to distribution centers and scores of food drives each week — almost impossible without computer scheduling.

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American charities may not have a happy holiday - Associated Press

Posted: 27 Nov 2009 08:09 AM PST

SEATTLE (AP) -- American charities have weathered a significant drop in giving this year, and while they're hoping for a holiday miracle, a recent survey shows they will probably see a decrease in year-end generosity.

In light of the economic downturn, only 38 percent of Americans say they are more likely to give a charitable gift as a holiday present this year, compared to 49 percent last year, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive to be released Monday.

Some of the biggest U.S. charities say they are budgeting for a disappointing Christmas.

The survey commissioned by Federal Way, Wash.-based World Vision indicates they are prudent to not raise their expectations for now. The survey did find, however, that 74 percent of Americans plan to increase their charitable giving once the economy improves.

The nation's most successful fundraising organizations expected to see their income decline by an average of 9 percent in 2009, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Harris Interactive contacted 1,001 U.S. adults in a random telephone survey, and claims a 95 percent "confidence level."

About the same number of Americans are giving to charity these days, but they are giving fewer dollars, said Justin Greeves, senior vice president of Harris Interactive, which regularly polls Americans about their charitable giving.

Times are doubly tough this year for many nonprofits because the need for their services is increasing at the same time donations are decreasing, but Nancy Brown, chief executive officer of the American Heart Association, said her organization is doing its best to cut expenses not services.

"I say this to our staff all the time: 'Our mission is not in a recession'," said Brown. The Dallas-based nonprofit ended its fiscal year on June 30 with donations down about 11.8 percent, and a staff cut of 371 people or about 10 percent of its work force.

The charity did grow in two ways this past year: both the number of donors and the number of volunteers increased. "More people with less money is better than less people with less money," Brown said.

Northwest Harvest, operator of Washington state's largest food bank, also reported volunteerism was up this fall while cash donations were down.

Executive Director Shelley Rotondo said the statewide hunger relief organization distributed more food, in keeping with a record increase in need, during fiscal 2009 than in any time in the agency's 40-year history.

But that generosity is not continuing at the same pace this fiscal year.

Donations did not meet expectations during the first quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended in September, and Rotondo was not optimistic about the second quarter, thanks to state unemployment figures holding steady near 10 percent.

Donations to charities with more of an international mission did not see the same boost in generosity that groups like food banks saw in 2009.

World Vision saw individual cash donations drop by $33 million this past year, but government grants, corporate donations and staff cuts made up for most of the shortfall.

Devin Hermanson, senior director of the nonprofit's gift catalog, has high hopes for the holiday season, despite the fact that the agency's own survey points in the opposite direction. This year's survey found 57 percent of American adults planned to spend less on holiday presents, but that's better than last year's 71 percent.

"Now that things are getting ever-so-slightly better, people are thinking I am going to give my kids a little more this year than I have been giving," Greeves said.

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