Our pal @RabbiYonah and a bunch of other familiar faces turned out to pedal for FUWH. JConnectLA has the full story.

Today, Alyssa Milano retweeted the Fed Up With Hunger contest that was announced on knowledge junkie blog MentalFloss.com to her 298,000 followers! Check out the post:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/38686

Or sign up for the event on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=159918248519

By Lori Tessel

I’m a Major Gifts Director here at the Jewish Federation of LA. My department recently went on a staff retreat, which is always an interesting experience. We began the day with a “mandatory volunteer opportunity.”

Mandatory volunteering? That’s an oxymoron. It irks me. You see, I do a lot of volunteering and I work for non-profit. I do these things because I want to make a difference. So forcing me to volunteer goes against every fiber of my being. Needless to say, I started my morning with quite a chip on my shoulder.

My group met at the Los Angeles Regional Food bank. I took a deep breath, relaxed my shoulders, and began to listen. Our guide gave the stats about hunger here in LA as workers and volunteers, who had already been there for hours, sorted food into boxes. The Regional Foodbank’s warehouse is enormous! It’s filled with so many varieties of food and beverage, it’s overwhelming. Which means that the number of people who face hunger every day is overwhelming. It was heartbreaking.

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Para Los Ninos Sukkot by Give Life Meaning.

Thanks to Garment & Citizen for the video above.

Thanks to everyone who came out to Hollywood Forever Cemetery last weekend! Together, we raised close to 5,000 pounds of food!

It’s Blog Action Day 2009, a day when the bloggers unite online for a cause.  It’s sort of like USA for Africa’s “We are the World,” except with 50% less singing, 100% more typing, and 23% more Hall and Oates (at least in my case).  This year, the cause is climate change, which makes Blog Action Day sort of like “blogosphere for the atmosphere.”

The topic got me thinking to 2003 when the Pentagon was asked what they thought was the biggest threat to national security. The Pentagon didn’t say terrorism.  They didn’t say banking, national health care or reality shows

They said climate change.

That’s right.  The Pentagon, still recovering after 9/11, in a time when the correct answer to any question was global terrorism, said the greatest risk to U.S. national security was climate change.

Not because we would get a little hot, or that Al Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize, but because climate change would lead to world-wide hunger, food insecurity and famine, which would foment political instability and war.

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There were exactly three requirements at the college I attended – take a freshman literature class, a foreign language and a quantitative (math) class. My college must have invented fuzzy math since it allowed you to fulfill the quantitative requirement by taking psychology, such as I did. Being the math whiz that I am, I still almost failed the course. Not only did the rudimentary statistics elude me, so did the habit of going to class. It’s fitting that my wife is a PhD in psychology.

I was talking to the Dr. Missus about Fed Up with Hunger and she mentioned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. According to her, eating and other essential human needs like breathing and drinking make up the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. This base level must be satisfied before higher-order activities in human life can be achieved – you know, the things that make up a civil society like morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance of facts, self-esteem, friendship, family, so on and so forth. Forget her smart talk, the layman’s translation is: the Hierarchy is like psychological Jenga; if you take out the lower blocks, you lose.
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Facing Hunger is a segment where we bring you stories from those in the LA community, your neighbors, who don’t get enough to eat. We’ve changed their names out of respect for dignity and privacy.  If you, or someone in your life, has known hunger, please share your experience with us at FedUpWithHunger@givelifemeaning.org >>

“Gladys”
Age: 76
Neighborhood: South Los Angeles
Source: Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church

A retired registered nurse, Gladys supports herself on a small Social Security income. Diabetes and stroke have made it hard for her to walk. She lives alone. Once a month, volunteers from Gladys’ church leave a grocery bag filled with chicken, bread, and canned corn on her doorstep. The monthly deliveries help her get by, but her church food pantry is at its lowest level in recent memory. Gladys doesn’t know how many more deliveries she can expect.

“Betty”
Age: 72
Neighborhood: Pico-Robertson
Source: Jewish Family Services/SOVA

Betty is a widow who relies on her late husband’s social security and modest savings. Each month, she struggles to pay her rent, utilities and co-payments for blood pressure and heart medication. Food is her last priority.

Fed Up With Hunger collaborated with B’nai David-Judea during Sukkot last week and helped feed the community, outside, in the temple’s sukkah. Check out this little video:

Last night’s Ghostbusters screening at the Hollywood Forever cemetery was a (slime) blast! Thanks to everyone who helped plan it over @EILI and to all who came out with cans of food. Pat yourselves on the back; you really stepped up to the plate, folks and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Check out the photos below, and be sure to click through here to see some short vids we took. Also: Check back soon for a little doc we’re cutting now about the evening.