Yes but I realized that when AmpleHarvest.org is in place, it's not a temporary solution; it's a permanent solution. Because, to be honest, once Joan has learned about it, and once Joan has started donating to St. Joseph's food pantry, Joan will presumably do that for the rest of her gardening life. In other words, AmpleHarvest.org doesn't come to Chicago, stay there for six months and then move on. So, AmpleHarvest.org has the opportunity to bring a permanent improvement to the life of the Gulf, in addition to an emergency improvement.
So, I made the decision that we were going to focus all of our efforts on the five-state region: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. And because Louisiana was dead in the center of the mess and because they were still struggling with the aftermath of Katrina, I went to Louisiana first. And I went to the Louisiana food bank and I said, "Here's what I want to do. And I need your help in doing it." I needed to design an effort in the Gulf Region that would be in their particular language. I could come in from the NorthEast and talk about the problem in the Gulf Region, sounding like I'm from the NorthEast. But it wouldn't have the flavor of the anger or frustration or whatever else that would be if I had instead been a person [from] the Gulf myself.
I found a
wonderful gentleman, a food resource guy at the Louisiana food bank, and he was
furious about BP. And I got him to agree to do the writing for the landing page
that we put up for that. He wrote
about it from a sense of anger, the beauty of the Gulf and the anger about
what's going on. Something that would resonate with the people in the Gulf
Region" I had an artist, a photographer, who had done a wonderful photograph of
an oil spill, just a sheen on the water. We put that on the page. We got that
page up pretty quickly and then, worked with the food bank, to get the word out
to the food pantries.
Now, the Louisiana food bank was one of the ones we went to last May. We went back to them again and said, "Let's revisit this." Another 20-30 food pantries came up in a matter of a week or two. At the same time, I then went to the LSU Ag Department and I said, "I need you guys to get your Master Gardeners to get the word out to all the gardeners in the state that they can help make a difference." And so they did their piece of it.
I then turned to Florida and they were a little slow. So, I turned left and I went to Texas. And the USDA with Texas has been amazing. Even though Texas wasn't seriously impacted by the BP oil spill around the Gulf. The USDA pulled together a conference call with all food banks across Texas. And we did a major presentation and they're involved in pushing them to get more of their pantries up. As of last week, the word from Texas was, "We're like an aircraft carrier. We're really slow to turn. But once we start turning, you can't stop us." So, Texas is going to take a little bit of time to get its move on. The important thing about the Gulf Region is that it's a 12-month growing season. The Louisiana Ag people said to me, "This is the state where you can put a seed in the ground every day of the year."
We're working with the Gulf Region. We're still working with Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. But the focus is on that particular region. While I was doing that, all of a sudden, Idaho started throwing dozens and dozens of food pantries up on AmpleHarvest.org. I get an email in real-time the moment a food pantry comes up. It turns out that the Idaho food bank made the determination that they were going to push all their food pantries to register. They said, "This is outstanding. We're going to make this happen."
The funny thing is, Idaho has a short growing season, when compared with Texas. And I used that argument when I spoke with the folks in Texas. I said, "There's a state up north that has one pantry for every 13,000 people now registered with AmpleHarvest.org. You, Texas, have one pantry for every 130,000 people. Are you going to let Idaho make a fool out of you like this?" I know the Texans have big egos. So that's helping to move that along.
And particularly now, when people can't reach into their pockets because they're themselves cash-strapped, this is an opportunity for them to make a donation to the well-being of the community without impacting your own economics whatsoever...
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