Fruit and nutritious snacks are included in the backpacks of food prepared by ACFS.
caring community can make in the lives of Alabama’s hungry children. Yes, it takes a village.” As a member of the ACFS board, Shirley Mitchell recalls a day when Jim talked to a group about volunteering. “I’ll take whatever you can give,” he told them. “One day a month — or one hour.” Mitchell has seen the long hours both Jim and Linda donate to ACFS. “When they started, they often put in 80 hours per week. Today, volunteers carry some of the load, but they continue to work 40-plus hours weekly. They never ask volunteers to do something they wouldn’t do themselves.” Senior citizens and the homeless are also part of this food distribution. Each month ACFS feeds nearly 1,500 people in 400 families who are food insecure. Using a market-style distribution, parents can choose fresh and nutritious food their families will eat, which reduces food waste. “Why give families something they will never eat?” Linda says. “Instead, have a center and encourage them to shop for nutritious items that will be used for meals.” The couple has identified 14,000 food insecure children in three counties and will work to feed as many as possible. “We would like to see this program replicated across Alabama — even across America,” Jim says. For more information about the group, visit www. alabamachildhoodfoodsolutions.com, or send an email to ChildhoodFood@ Shirley Mitchell of Wilsonville packs gmail.com. A bulk beans into one pound bags. 32 FEBRUARY 2016
Learning to find funds Part of the success of ACFS has come from grants and donations. For anyone who wants to start a feeding program in their community, Jim Jones offers some suggestions: • Use online grant sources to identify foundations and corporations in Alabama that supply grant monies. Learn how to make a proposal to such groups and how to form a grant-writing committee from volunteers. • Look around your community and identify local businesses that are part of a national chain or franchise. These businesses have foundations. Work with the CEO or manager to locate funding for hunger projects. Are there grants that provide for children, low-income families, or education that can be connected to food insecurity? Find creative ways to recognize these businesses through contact with social media, mail-outs, and appreciation dinners. • When Jim and Linda receive funding for a project, they continue to communicate with this organization for other needs. Recently, a $35,000 van was donated to ACFS to deliver weekend backpacks to schoolchildren. A recent project was “Sock-it-to-Hunger” where 11,040 large socks were distributed to schools and churches across the state. Groups and individuals participated by filling the socks with $5.
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