Leadership Lubbock Hunger Banquet

The current Leadership Lubbock class stopped by the South Plains Food Bank today to volunteer and to have lunch. Leadership Lubbock is a program of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. For the past thirty years, this program has provided an opportunity for Lubbock Leaders to learn more about their community. Today, they were learning about several of Lubbock social service agencies, including the South Plains Food Bank.

Today's class came expecting to volunteer, which they did, and to have lunch with us. Of course no one told them it was a Feast or Famine Banquet. As our guests arrived they were give a fate card that designated them as either upper income (15%), middle income (25%) or lower income (60%). The percentages represent the percent of the world's population that fit into each of those categories. The upper income group had nice five course meal. The middle income group had a hearty meal of beans and rice with corn bread. The lower income folks were fed soup and crackers.

The lunch of course is a metaphor for how food and other resources are distributed around the world, not in a necessarily equitable way. Economic forces beyond individual control rewarded some and moved others out of the middle income group into the lower income group.

On the whole, the lunch succeeded in introducing this Leadership Lubbock class to the issue of hunger. Each year, the South Plains Food Bank and our network of agencies serves more than 90,000 people. Hunger exists. Fortunately, there are people in our community who join us to serve the hungry by providing food, donating time and by sharing the stories of the hungry with others.

Our banquet today was modeled after the Oxfam Hunger Banquet. The San Francisco Food Bank also offers on online version of Hunger 101, an interactive look at hunger.

After lunch, we put the group to work marking cans, bagging peaches, and making boxes. Michelle, the lady in charge of making food boxes for us, said they were great. Then she asked me why they couldn't stay all afternoon!

I thought the story about Leadership Lubbock would end here. However not long after they left us, a middle aged woman stopped by the South Plains Food Bank wearing a tee-shirt with an "interesting" message. She quickly explained that the shirt was given to her by a local shelter and is not her choice of apparel. Simply put, it is all she has to wear.

A victim of abuse that left her disabled and now a cancer victim, she is beginning life again. Between rent, deposits and medicine, she has no money for food. Life has not been kind or fair. But then that was part of the message of today's hunger banquet.

We may not correct or solve all the issues facing this sweet woman. But today she will have food. Perhaps she received some of the cans marked by our Leadership Lubbock volunteers. Maybe her box included a bag of frozen peaches. One thing is not in question. She has 50 new friends she didn't have before lunch.

Thank you Leadership Lubbock. You made a difference today.