Duck, Run, or Give: Thoughts on Food Drives

Over this past weekend the small group I am in hosted a food drive at a local supermarket.  Our church has partnered with a local organization, Center for Food Action, to help collect food for those in need in our local community.  We set up a table and began passing out lists of the most needed non-perishable items.

Some of the things I learned about people when approached by a group organizing a food drive is that they duck, run, or give.  People’s responses were complicated: Some duck and smile; some run and scream; others give out of guilt.  I heard some of the strangest things, like “I can’t give because I live in New York” even though we could see the New Jersey/New York state line from where we were standing; “I already give too much”; “I don’t have insurance” (which while sad, doesn’t have any bearing on donating a 70¢ can of tuna); and the ever-popular “I don’t have time for this.”  I learned that the easiest way people try to get out of giving is to throw money at the problem.  We have been taught by our culture so well to never meet actual needs.  We have been taught to throw money at an organization and let them take care of it, what John Perkins calls “outsourcing justice” (Welcoming Justice, pg. 108).  We weren’t lying to these people.  This was a food drive, not a money drive, yet so many people gave us single dollar bills instead of buying a can of tuna and actually donating real food to a food drive.

Some things I learned about myself though is that hospitality works.  One of our group members started handing carts to people as they walked in, and their response to us turned much more favorable. Being on the other side of a food drive for the first time, I also learned that I need to just say “no thank you” to volunteers outside of a grocery store or shopping center.  By the end of the day all I wanted was for people to either give food or just smile at me or say “no thank you.”  I don’t want to be sneered at, stared at, glanced at, or ignored.  I didn’t like when people ducked me by pulling out a cell phone and fake talking or by just running by me and refusing to make eye contact.  I just wanted someone to give either a smile and a “no thanks” or to give a food donation.  That’s all.