B.J. Riley
The Tribune-Star
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As I put the receiver back on the phone’s cradle, I realized that saying yes was the easy part. The question came from Troy Fears, executive director of the United Way of the Wabash Valley. He wanted to know if I would participate in the Hunger Challenge. He explained to me that the challenge involved participants eating for seven days on the amount that a food stamp or SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) recipient would get in that time. Troy went over the rules vaguely, and I knew that this would be for a good cause.
The folks who volunteered to be involved have only $32 for the week for food, $4.57 a day. It includes all food and drink, none of which can be supplemented by well-meaning family or friends.
The Hunger Challenge began at midnight Sunday, so earlier in the day, I went to a local discount grocer to try to apportion my food budget. While there, I ran into three other Hunger Challenge participants doing the same thing. I first saw Bernice Helman, who is also the chair of this year’s United Way fundraising campaign. She was in the coffee aisle, trying to figure out how to squeeze coffee into her budget. At that point, I had just a few items in my cart, so I stopped at the coffee to check prices, to see if I could afford it. While Bernice and I were talking, Tim Fears and his wife, Twila, were pushing their shopping cart with calculator in hand, studying what their next shopping choice would be. After exchanging a few tips, we all went on our way to complete our shopping task.
There are 22 community members who are taking part in this weeklong challenge, which is designed to create awareness of hunger and access-to-food issues in our community and statewide. As Howard Greninger wrote in his newspaper story published Saturday, 884,000 Hoosiers are on the SNAP program. Nationally, statistics are staggering. Reports show that 1 in 6 Americans live in households that are food insecure; 13 percent of Hoosier households are food insecure.
John Etling, director of Catholic Charities of Terre Haute and the Terre Haute Catholic Charities Food Bank, is always eager to share information on the plight of those who go hungry. He is passionate about trying to find solutions. The hope for this challenge is to bring a humble awareness to what it takes to eat for a week on just $32 worth of food. For those of us taking the challenge, at midnight Sunday, we can go back to having Starbucks and snacks from the vending machine. Many people don’t have those options. They will start next week with the same challenge.
At the grocery store, my shopping included a chicken, three cans of tuna, a half-pound of spaghetti noodles and spaghetti sauce, two heads of lettuce and salad dressing, two boxes of macaroni and cheese, eight potatoes, a box of cereal, a half-gallon of milk, peanut butter, jelly, two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, coffee, sweetener, 100 tea bags for iced tea, five bananas, mustard and celery. Total cost: $31.34.
Calculating the prices of my groceries as I trudged up and down the aisles, I had put a jar of coffee creamer in my cart, thinking that I could afford it. At the check-out counter, the total cost rang up over-budget, so the creamer had to go. I told the cashier that I would return the creamer to the shelf in the coffee aisle, where I found Bernice Helman in the same spot, still trying to work coffee into her budget. She was determined to figure out something she could do without, in order to be able to drink coffee.
Good luck to those who are taking the challenge. We all have been given buttons — I call them the “Don’t Feed the Bear” buttons — to wear, to let people know we are participating and they should not offer us food. It will be a challenging week, but also an experience that will remind me and my family how fortunate we are.
B.J. Riley is the publisher of the Tribune-Star. He can be reached at (812) 231-4297 or bjriley@tribstar.com.
