St. Paul, Minn. – July 25, 2014 - During the ninth annual Bremer Bank Meals for Many Campaign, the $2-for-$1 donation match up to $35,000, was met and exceeded once again. In total, approximately $96,000 was raised during the two-week campaign for Second Harvest Heartland, local Feeding America food banks and local food shelves. This total includes an additional $2,100 donated by Bremer as a result of a $1 donation per completion of an online hunger awareness quiz. Bremer’s total donation over the nine years of the campaign has reached $1.2 million.
During the campaign, Bremer employees across Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin also raised money by sponsoring bake sales, hosting cook-outs and coordinating food drives.
“We are always so proud to report the donation totals of our annual hunger awareness campaign,” said Pat Donovan, president and chief executive officer of Bremer Financial Corporation. “Last year, we surpassed the $1 million mark in total donations over the history of this campaign and we continue to watch that total grow. Our employees understand that hunger impacts all of us, including many neighbors in our own bank communities. Thank you to our employees, clients and communities that participated in this year’s campaign.”
Bremer Financial Corporation Bremer Financial Corporation is a privately held, $8.7 billion regional financial services company jointly owned by the Otto Bremer Foundation and Bremer employees. Founded in 1943 by Otto Bremer, the company is headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota and provides a comprehensive range of banking, investment, trust and insurance products and services throughout Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Clients include individuals and families, mid-sized corporations, small businesses, agribusinesses, nonprofits, and public and government entities. For more information, go to Bremer.com.
Gary Fitch will kick off his “Minnesota Miracle” walk to help end hunger in Minnesota at 10 a.m. Aug. 2 in International Falls.
By EMILY GEDDE Staff Writer, Ifalls Journal
His tennis shoes are laced up and Gary Fitch is ready to make a difference.
In two weeks, the retired mail carrier will set out on a 300-mile, 30-day walk from International Falls to St. Paul in an effort to end hunger in the state. He’s calling the initiative “Minnesota Miracle.”
“There are too many hungry kids in this state,” he said. “We need to take care of our own. We need to do something about it.”
And he intends to.
At 10 a.m. Aug. 2, Fitch will start his journey at the Bob Walls Memorial Union Hall and invites anyone and everyone to walk him for as long as they can.
“Even if people can walk the two miles to the city limits line of International Falls, that’d be amazing,” he said. “International Falls is the ‘if’ in Minnesota Miracle. If we can start off well, we can make this happen.”
Since the more than two years after the idea of Minnesota Miracle began, Fitch has partnered with Second Harvest Heartland, the largest hunger relief organization in the Upper Midwest, and he has also gained support from the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States. The effort has also gained support from the Koochiching Labor Assembly, which represents unions working in Koochiching County.
““It’s a grass roots labor movement,” he said.
Originally, the walk was set to begin in April, but to allow more time for Fitch to ramp up the behind-the-scenes effort, he moved the start date to Aug. 2. That way, the walk will conclude on Sept. 1 when he will join the labor parade at the Minnesota State Fair.
Fitch also revised his goal of raising $30 million “to something a little more realistic.”
“My goal now is $1.5 million,” he said. “That’s only one penny a mile from 285,000 union workers...That’s attainable. It would allow me to plug $60,000 to $70,000 into the 300 food shelves every year.”
So far, $30,000 has been raised towards the Minnesota Miracle Ending Hunger Fund. The fund, he explained, will be set up as an endowment to generate additional dollars off interest.
“The nest has been built, now I’m working on filling that nest,” he said. “Donated money will never be touched. That’s going to stay there. We’re just going to use the interest.”
Fitch is hopeful Minnesota Miracle generates enough attention to encourage people to donate and get out and walk with him to feed more mouths in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
“I may not be able to make the state hunger-free, but I’m just a little old 62-year-old guy,” he said. “I need everyone’s help.”
For the ninth year in a row, Bremer Bank is partnering with the Second Harvest Food Bank and other local Feeding America food banks to help end hunger in our local communities.
Donations made June 16 through 28, 2014 to Bremer Bank will be matched $2-for-$1, up to a total of $35,000! Additionally, Bremer partnered with Software for Good to create an interactive Meals for Many quiz. Bremer will donate $1 for each completed quiz up to $5,000.
Minnesota's economy is in much better shape than it was a few years ago. Housing prices are rising, and the state's unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in April - the same as it was a decade earlier, well before the Great Recession.
But nearly 504,000 Minnesotans still rely on food stamps, more than double the number of 10 years ago. For many recipients, that financial assistance isn't enough to keep food on the table.
"This is our new normal. We're not waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel," said Michelle Ness, executive director of the PRISM food shelf in Golden Valley.
"The recession, when it started, we said 'let's give it a few years and let's wait and see.' Well here we are. We're not waiting for some great boom to happen. It's folks who are getting re-employed and they're underemployed."
Ness said her clientele increasingly can and does work, but their jobs don't pay very well. She said the food shelf is still very busy and serves about 500 families a month.
Among the people it serves is a 47-year-old woman who said she cannot work because of medical problems.
Lisa, who did not want to give her last name, said the $80 a month she receives in benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program isn't enough.
"For big things like soups and noodles and stuff like that, it's fine," she said. "But when you run out of milk and eggs and the essentials like juice and stuff like that, it goes real fast."
So she often comes to the PRISM food shelf to pick up additional items.
State Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson said underemployment is also part of the reason why so many Minnesotans are still relying on government food support. There are also other factors too.
More people are now eligible for help from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In 2010, the state raised the income limit and stopped counting vehicles and savings accounts against applicants.
Jesson said the state also made a big push to sign up eligible people during the recession.
Food stamp use and jobless rate indexed to 2004. MPR News
"We don't want children, adults, seniors, anyone going to bed hungry," she said. "That's not good for kids who want to go to school to learn, not good for parents who are out looking for jobs, not good for anyone. So that's one of the reasons that we wanted to make sure that if you're eligible for SNAP you knew about it and we made it easier for those folks to get on it."
Even critics of food stamps acknowledge there's a need.
"A lot of people are still hurting, there's no question," said Mitch Pearlstein, founder and president of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative Twin Cities think tank. Pearlstein, a former United Way board member, said he has seen firsthand how rough life can be for people who are working low-wage jobs.
But although Pearlstein said government should play a role in alleviating hunger, he said the current rate of food stamp use isn't sustainable.
"The government doesn't have the money," he said. "We simply have to find ways of scaling down on government, at least significantly reducing its growth, and we keep on failing."
Congress has tried to scale back food stamp use, and Minnesota's enrollment has fallen 6 percent in the past year.
Colleen Moriarty, the executive director of Hunger Solutions Minnesota, attributes the decline to a drop in efforts to encourage people to seek assistance. When President Obama signed this year's farm bill, bus and radio advertisements for SNAP came to a halt. When those ads were running, people signed up, she said.
"We would see real spikes when we would be out doing that kind of real education to the public about what being on public benefits could mean as far as helping them," she said.
I met Elmer while visiting a food shelf in Cass County. He was the center of attention as he picked up his monthly NAPS (Senior Commodity) box and received a few other items like bread and produce. You could tell that the staff and volunteers really liked Elmer and looked forward to seeing him. I had a chance to visit with him while conducting a client survey. He was in his mid-80’s, happy and positive, despite major health issues and the struggle to make ends meet.
He left school by the 8th grade and worked as a farm laborer and bus driver all his life. He told me several stories about how he enjoyed his time driving school bus. I’m sure he was every child’s favorite bus driver, so kind and friendly. I bet he bought treats for the kids on the last day of school. I had a bus driver like that once.
Elmer lived on less than $500 a month in social security. He never made much money at the jobs he had over his long working life. Thanks to subsidized housing and food provided by a charity, he was just barely able to survive. Here is an example of our “Greatest Generation” living in poverty despite a lifetime of hard work.
It’s a good thing that we have programs like NAPS Commodities, food shelves and soup kitchens for people like Elmer. But I regret that he has to depend on charity to get enough food to eat. Our “Greatest Generation” deserves better.
St. Paul, Minn. – July 25, 2014 - During the ninth annual Bremer Bank Meals for Many Campaign, the $2-for-$1 donation match up to $35,000, was met and exceeded once again. In total, approximately $96,000 was raised during the two-week campaign for Second Harvest Heartland, local Feeding America food banks and local food shelves. This total includes an additional $2,100 donated by Bremer as a result of a $1 donation per completion of an online hunger awareness quiz. Bremer’s total donation over the nine years of the campaign has reached $1.2 million.
