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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Dying Food: A Michigan Charity Profit Model Of Child Poverty

Do not get me wrong.  Gleaners is a wonderful organization doing important work, but I am here to exam the model.

The model of which I speak is the trend of for-profit corporations partnering with non-profit counterparts for the purposes of tax write-offs and consumer loyalty.

Businesses in the food industry, including small farmers, can contribute their excess stock for a tax write off.  This is a very encouraging business model to increase productivity but what happens when there is abuse of the charity model?

Here you have the State of Michigan demonstrating it is, through its policies, that it is neglecting the economic well-being of children instead of focusing on why children are hungry.

What happened to the federally allocated funds to the state for purposes of schools providing free school lunch programs or were the educational cuts sloshed into the state's rainy day surplus to expand the business tax cuts to create more jobs for the industry of child poverty?

Instead of addressing the multitude of factors which lead to child poverty, the model only benefits businesses in the long run.

Business can intentionally overproduce, then donate their surplus and waste, food which does not have an extended shelf life, to write-off 100% of the costs.

Dying food is better than no food.

Where are these so-called power women when it comes to advocating the amelioration of child poverty and making sure others do not profit from the perpetuation of a child's impoverished condition?

Child poverty is a multi-billion dollar industry, too big to fail.

Gleaners' Women's Power Breakfast raising money for hungry children


The event was downtown at Eastern Market. Attendees heard from a kindergarten teacher in Detroit whose students are impacted by Gleaners backpack program, and a grandmother who helped her granddaughter's school get food support from Gleaners.

Gleaners currently serves more than 130 schools in the metro area, but another 200 are on the waiting list. Gerry Brisson with Gleaners says very generous gifts of $15,000 and $20,000 were given at the breakfast to help those schools on the waiting list, as well as many other smaller donations.

"I am sure we're going to exceed our million meal goal today because of the generosity and true outpouring of faith by this group of people," he says.

For more information on Gleaners' school programs, or to make a donation, visit www.gcfb.org

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