Learning from Doing
For weeks, we’ve been studying this concept of food justice. How the food systems in our country work, whom they include and exclude, what happens from farm to table, and everything in between. We could spend many more weeks talking about food justice, but some things are better learned by doing.
It rained all last weekend, but that didn’t stop us going out into the world and doing our own food justice reporting. On Friday, we got up early and drove 94.5 miles south on I-79 to the Mountaineer Food Bank (MFB) in Gassaway, West Virginia. We visited Scott’s Run Settlement House just outside of Morgantown when we got back.
I’d forgotten how much I love running around with a camera and digging into the world. Everyone and everything has a story; it just has to be found.
I’m not really sure what I expected the MFB to be like, but it was a unique experience for me. Rows and rows of palettes stacked high with food lined the floor of the warehouse. The boxes created a sort of network of hallways, some wider than others, that guided us around what felt like a weird kind of library.
Before visiting the MFB, I didn’t really know much about how food banks work. As far as I knew, food banks and food pantries were the same thing. In reality, food banks are exactly what they sound like. The MFB collects mountains of food from donations, the government, etc. and distributes it to food pantries and other charitable food organizations. Food banks help stock the local distributers, like the Scott’s Run Settlement House, who give out to the community.
Scott’s Run Settlement House (SRSH) has been around since the 1920s helping people in the area — for lack of a better phrase — get settled. SRSH provides food for families in need, but it goes a step further. People can get baby care products like diapers and personal hygiene products as well.
I learned a lot about hunger and what I like to think of as the Pursuit of Food Justice from our trips to the MFB and Scott’s Run Settlement House. Perhaps my biggest take away was that there isn’t one face to need. There isn’t a way to determine who needs what based off of income or possessions or job status. It could very well be that a family has just enough to keep the car full of gas and the house lit and warm but nothing else to provide food or anything else.
A family can have a decent income — even a high income — and still be in need. Maybe someone is sick or recently unemployed. Any number of confounding factors can force an individual or family out of comfort and into instability.
However, I also learned something else, something that I’ve been learning from the beginning of my adventure in food justice. I learned that where there are hungry people, there are people willing and wanting to feed them.
