A Mother's Story
By Elizabeth Lutri, Children's Programs & Kids Cafe Coordinator

     The Christmas party at the ConAgra Los Ninos Kids Cafe was underway, and off to a rollicking start.  As a Kids Cafe coordinator, nothing is more satisfying than watching a special event for the children go off without a hitch.  As the children lined up for their meal, an elderly woman approached me.   In a soft voice, she asked if I had a moment, because she had something she needed to tell me.

     So as to avoid being run over by children eager to try their pimento and pea-dotted Christmas chicken, I found a small, out of the way table, pulled out a chair for her, and waited patiently as she slowly made her way over to me, gripping her cane for support and moving deliberately to maintain her balance.    

    Once seated, she drew a deep breath and said: “I have been waiting to find somebody that I can thank for everything all of these churches and this Kids Cafe have done for me.  If it hadn’t been for the people of this church, and the other ones around here, I would have nothing.”

     A widow, suffering from degenerative bone disorder and arthritis, she told me how her daughter and her two grandchildren, ages four and twelve, came to live with her when her daughter was displaced and left homeless after a painful divorce from a man now serving time in a penitentiary.

     Though she was on a fixed income, and still indebted to the bank for her home, she did not hesitate to take in her daughter and grandchildren.   With no child support coming in, and a frustrating string of ‘commission-based’ jobs, her daughter struggled to add to the family’s meager budget.  In the meantime, she added her name to the extensive waiting list for public housing, and began the process of signing up for public assistance.  During the interim, canned food, bread, and cereals from local church food pantries supplied by the San Antonio Food Bank provided the only nutrition for their home on regular basis. 

     “And this place, this Cafe” she said, gesturing around the room, “Thank God for it being here, so that the children have a place to go where they can eat.   And it feels safe in here, and friendly.”

     Later, when I hugged her and her grandchildren goodbye, I asked if I could write down her words to share them with America’s Second Harvest.  I assured her that I wouldn’t use any names.  She said, “That’s alright, you can use my name to tell the whole world.  I’m that thankful for what you all have done for us.  I don’t think I’d be alive otherwise.”

     As I drove home that night, I thought about the poignant conversation I had with that frail, but resolute woman whose love for her child, and concern for her grandchildren, forced her to go hat-in-hand to church pantries that, in her younger years, she often donated to.  It was heartbreaking to imagine her with that painful arthritis, and delicate bones having to travel from pantry to pantry so that the children would have something to eat.  I only hoped that the people volunteering at the pantries were kind enough to carry the groceries out to her car for her.

     The happy ending to her story was that the previous week, just seventeen days before Christmas, her daughter received both her Food Stamps and an apartment in a local public housing unit.  To help with recovery from the budget strain of the past several months, I put her in contact with the San Antonio Food Bank’s Senior Citizen Food Stamp Outreach coordinator, who will be able to fast-track her application for food stamps, so that reliance on food pantries for her, will be a thing of the past.

     Now when I see those precious children, whose shy smiles greet me when I visit that Kids Cafe, I am thankful that even though they are no longer living under their Grandmother’s roof, they still remain close, with a newfound understanding of the strength of motherly love, and human compassion.

What is hunger to a child?
By Elizabeth Lutri, Children's Programs & Kids Cafe Coordinator

      When people conceptualize hunger, they often incorporate a binary misconception into their thinking: have or have not, full or empty, either-or.  If a person considers hunger in these terms, it is easy to label anti-hunger advocates as doom-and-gloom alarmists.  After all, beans and rice cost pennies, and they can keep a person alive. However, before a person mentally tallies hunger as an abstract concept, I ask that he or she consider the gray area between the black and white of either/or.  This is referred to as “food insecurity.”  Food insecurity is not having a stable grocery budget for your household.  Food insecurity is scraping the last of the peanut butter from the jar, or taking the last slice of cheese and not being sure when you will have the money to go to the grocery store to restock.  Thousands of children in South Texas live in the cold, rocky gray area of food insecurity.  What is hunger, to a child then?

    Childhood hunger is being the little boy or girl in the lunchroom who, after eating his or her free lunch, gladly accepts the leftovers offered by classmates.  Childhood hunger is having a teen-aged sibling eat all the cereal in the house, leaving you without breakfast on Saturday morning. Childhood hunger is thinking that plain spaghetti noodles and salt is dinner.  Childhood hunger is six hours, from noon to evening, when there is no after school snack, and sometimes nothing more than tortilla chips for dinner.  When one considers hunger in these terms, suddenly the adage “feast or famine” does not apply. It is more like nibble, horde and beg.

     There is help for childhood hunger. Food Stamps, WIC, and free or reduced lunches are excellent programs to turn the tide of this insidious epidemic, however at the San Antonio Food Bank, we want to go a little farther. The San Antonio Food Bank participates in Kids Cafe, a program of America’s Second Harvest.  Kids Cafes are open primarily after school or weekends and provide children with a hot meal and a safe haven during those gray, hungry hours between the time the school bell rings and when dinner is served.  Children are not only nourished physically at a Kids Cafe, but receive emotional enrichment as well, in the form of homework help, sports, arts, and crafts. 

     The San Antonio Food Bank has a goal of opening nine new Kids Cafes in our South Texas area by 2004.  Because a Kids Cafe is run primarily by volunteers, or as part of a church or social service organization, there are many people and agencies eager to create Kids Cafes who face the challenge of finding the resources to get started.  These people and agencies share the San Antonio Food Bank’s collective dream of having a Kids Cafe as a safe haven in every neighborhood where plain spaghetti is a menu item.  We have hard work ahead, but we have the dream, as well as our perseverance and, most importantly, the tested and true Kids Cafe formula for success.  Where there is a will, there is a way--away from that gray area of childhood hunger.

He was once somebody's baby
By Elizabeth Lutri, Children's Programs & Kids Cafe Coordinator  

     He wore his clothes in layers.  Faded, spotty, ragged layers enshrouding a body tormented by severe deformities.  He had a hunched back that twisted at one side, dominating his center of balance.  It rose across his shoulder blade and blended into a withered, weak arm, decimating any hope for the dexterity needed to perform manual labor or clerical work.   His face also reflected the ravages his body endured. His nose, was truncated, and made even more noticeable in contrast to his bulging forehead and the swollen lymph nodes on his throat.  The flattened nose seemed permanently wrinkled in disgust, even though the lines in his heavy forehead bespoke nothing but despair.

     As he spooned warm oatmeal into his mouth with his thick, knotted fingers, his tortured face relaxed.  With the taste of the sweet, smooth cereal, so lovingly prepared by the kindly proprietor of the soup kitchen, his trembling hands were able to re-capture the innate reflex of moving food to mouth.  He ate his fill, at the cracked table in the corner of the soup kitchen cafeteria.  He took his time, visibly savoring each bite of the oatmeal, as well as a generous serving of eggs and a warm apple muffin

     When he was finished, he rose on shaky legs and diligently took his tray to the dishwasher’s cart.  Then he shuffled off, to the place or spot where he would spend the rest of his day.  He would be back the next morning for breakfast, and for the simple pleasure those few minutes of eating a good, hot meal brought to an otherwise wretched existence.

     I followed him outside, keeping my distance as he made his way up the street.  I wondered about his life, his childhood, and speculated as to the cause of his condition and the tragic turn of events that led him to the streets of San Antonio.  He was once somebody’s baby.  Wanted or not, loved or not, he had been birthed into this world by somebody.  I hoped that he once had the love of a parent or grandparent in his life.  I ached to imagine him as an unwanted child, abandoned to his fate.   Saddened, I found comfort by turning back through the door of the soup kitchen, where I picked up a sponge to help clean the shabby dining room as best I could so that he’d have a clean place to eat the next morning.