General

3rd Annual Thanksgiving Hunger Awareness Day

Sunday, 21 November 2004
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Organizer: Friends Helping Friends

On Sunday November 21st, the Church of the Rehabilitation, the First Unitarian Chuch of Rochester, Friends Helping Friends, God’s Holy Outreach Ministry, St. Francis Xavier Church, 104 WDKX and others will join with additional organizations across the state in bringing attention to the hunger and poverty in the greater Rochester area. The Hunger Action Network of NYS (HANNYS) is sponsoring this statewide call for Thanksgiving Awareness of Hunger.

Hunger has been steadily increasing over the past decades, currently over 904,000 New Yorkers must rely on soup kitchens and food panties each week. From September 2002 to September 2003, the Hunger Action Network found a 27% increase in the number of people utilizing food panties and soup kitchens in NYS. Too many New Yorkers are forced to choose between food and other basic needs because they lack good jobs and quality health care. New York State has lost more than 300,000 net jobs since 2001; more than 3 million New Yorkers lack health insurance. Is it any wonder that the number of families relying on emergency food resources is increasing?

Through three weekly distributions, Friends Helping Friends provides approximately 10,000 lbs. of groceries to over five hundred people. We invite the media to join with legislators from our area AT 1:30 PM AT 316 BAY STREET, St. Francis Xavier Church to join in a free banquet and grocery distribution and to better understand the reasons for increasing hunger and homelessness. Friends Helping Friends has just moved its Sunday grocery distribution to St. Francis Xavier Church to provide for a neighborhood without a food cupboard provider. WDKX will be broadcasting live from St. Francis Xavier Church; the 3rd Annual Hunger Awareness Day will feature speakers from various faith communities.

"We as citizens are responsible for taking care of each other. We need to look to ourselves to solve the problems around us, to build a new society in the shell of the old," said Andrew Stankevich, FHF Director. Take a few moments on November 21st to join us at St. Francis Xavier Church at 316 Bay Street to better understand this unacceptable hunger crisis in our own community.

Location:
St. Francis Xavier Church, 316 Bay Street

URL: http://www.friendshelpingfriends.cjb.net