GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Leaders around the world and here in Green Bay took October 16th to observe World Food Day. The worldwide event aims to increase awareness, understanding, and year-round action to alleviate hunger.
Mayor Eric Genrich delivered a proclamation recognizing the day during an observation at Paul’s Pantry on Wednesday morning. The facility also offered tours and information about how the community can help neighbors who deal with hunger and food insecurity.
Paul’s Pantry Executive Director Craig Robbins pointed out that “hunger is an issue in our community. Even though the economy has improved somewhat, there are jobs available, people are working two jobs and sometimes in a household four jobs to make ends meet.”
Robbins also emphasized the importance of helping others. He says he is thankful that “we still live in a community where people care about their neighbors. And that’s Paul’s Pantry motto: ‘Neighbors Feeding Neighbors’. We still have that small-town community feel to it.”
Robbins says that help comes from “so many different groups. You have all of your grocery stores that are helping, there are different clubs and organizations that have food drives. Schools do that. So really everyone working together.”
In 2019, Paul’s Pantry served 4,133 individual households. Those households made over 45,000 visits to the pantry for groceries with each household receiving an average of 98 pounds of food per visit. Robbins says an immense amount of food comes and goes through their doors, as “each day here, we’re distributing 16,000 pounds of food. So eight tons of food every day, five days a week.”
World Food Day began in 1981 in recognition of the founding of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945. In 2010, the USDA estimated that 131 billion pounds of food is wasted at the retail and consumer level each year in America.
