December 7, 2005
by Peter Schweitzer

Dear Plenty Friends,

Ron Cross Dog, Jr. 12, Chavez Little, 11, and Alonzo Martinez, 9 with watermelons from a family garden on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. Pine Ridge gardens project director, Tom Cook, reports that 538 gardens across 4500 sq. miles of the Reservation were included in the project this year. (photo by Tom Cook)

In a year that opened with the devastation of the monster tsunami that wreaked havoc in Southeast Asia, and closed with the catastrophic battering of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma, and a killer earthquake in Pakistan/Kashmir, we’ve been scrambling at Plenty to respond wherever we can while continuing to support our Central American Food Security Initiative partners, along with Plenty Belize, Kids To The Country and the work we’ve been assisting at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

What’s been gratifying is to find that the time-honored magic still works, that when you reach out past your own strength and resources to lend a hand, you are given what you need and then some. Through it all we’ve found old partners who’ve stepped up to bridge gaps, and new partners who’ve expanded our field of vision and ability to identify and fill needs. The network of big-hearted and like-minded individuals and organizations who have come out of the wood work to shoulder some of the load in every corner of every project Plenty is involved with has been simply awe inspiring—something to behold and something to build on because the secret of empowering the powerless is all about working together, cooperation and coalitions. When you don’t have the big bucks, your wealth is in your friends and allies and in the great pure heart of the effort you are able make together, and the healing love it produces. While we mourn for the victims of natural and unnatural disasters and rail at the incompetence and corruption of governments and bureaucracies, we are made hopeful by the extraordinary outpouring of help by ordinary folks who get up and create miracles.

Over in the column of disheartening news comes word that the unnatural disaster of hunger is continually spreading. We read in the New York Times that in 2004, “38 million Americans – including nearly one in five children – lived in households that found it difficult to afford food, 6 million more than in 1999.” And while we’re digesting this sad fact, our Congress is voting to cut food stamps for 200,000 American citizens living in poverty. Meanwhile, down in the Mississippi and Louisiana Delta communities thousands of people are homeless, hungry, cold and mostly forgotten except by their families and hundreds of mainly poor and certainly underfunded grassroots volunteer groups and individuals out there doing whatever they can to help.

The recent report titled The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005 by the respected Food and Agriculture organization of the UN (FAO), makes clear the debilitating and mutually compounding relationship between hunger and poverty. In its earliest days, Plenty learned about what we once described as the many spoked “wheel of poverty” that rolls over the backs of the poor. The FAO report places hunger at the hub of that wheel and describes the spokes emanating from that wheel as “impaired maternal and infant health,” “ weakened immune systems and rising child mortality,” “less education and employment for women and girls,” and “unsustainable use of natural resources.”

Thisis the wheel of a vicious cycle, and one that we have witnessed first-hand time and again since we first launched the ship we call Plenty in order to do something about it. The longer we’re at it, the more we have focused our efforts on sustainable food and agriculture projects, to get the food production resources in the hands of the people while expanding awareness of the importance of good nutrition. Reduced hunger and better nutrition, in turn, as FAO describes, produce better maternal and child health, lowered child mortality, increased productivity and income which ease the grip of poverty and reduce negative pressures on the environment—all of which creates a wheel of well-being and sustainability.

So hopefully as we roll out of this unusually challenging year, we will roll into the next one stronger, wiser, more alert, better prepared, and arm in arm with new friends, allies and partners inspired by the realization of how much more we can do together. Together. That's the magic word, isn't it? Without you, there's not nearly enough; with you there's plenty.

Yours truly,
Peter Schweitzer
Executive Director