Have you ever opened your pantry to find it bare, not by choice but because of circumstances beyond your control? Tim Butler of the East Texas Food Bank invites us to confront this reality, sharing insights into the lives of 250,000 East Texans facing food insecurity. We explore the heart-wrenching decisions that families endure daily, from children missing school lunches to seniors rationing their meals. As the chief development officer for the food bank, Butler provides a glimpse into the strategies and partnerships that enable the organization’s mission to combat hunger.
Go behind the scenes of the Food Bank’s network of 200 partner food pantries and soup kitchens, which served 150,000 households last year. Butler also offers an exclusive preview of the upcoming signature event, Empty Bowls, designed to raise funds and awareness. This unique campaign not only highlights the culinary talents of local restaurants but also showcases the creativity of Tyler ISD students through handcrafted bowls, symbolizing the community’s united front against hunger. Join us for a profound conversation that’s bound to stir more than just your appetite for change; it’s a call to action to nourish bodies and spirits alike.
TRANSCRIPT
LANDESS:
It may be the shortest mission statement ever for a nonprofit organization, and it goes like this: The East Texas Food Bank exists to fight hunger and feed hope in East Texas. I’m UT Tyler Radio News Director, Mike Landess. A hunger-free East Texas is the organization’s stated vision, and UT Tyler Radio Connects with Tim Butler, chief development officer for the Food Bank, to outline those lofty goals. What’s it going to take to get there, Tim?
BUTLER:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me here today. Probably the biggest thing that the East Texas Food Bank does is identify the food- insecure individuals within Northeast Texas. So food insecurity doesn’t necessarily mean someone’s hungry all the time, every meal, but they don’t necessarily know where all their meals are coming from. So it could be a child at a school that needs help with the National School Lunch Program, but they didn’t have that. Then, they’re missing lunch every day. It could be a senior at the end of every month who’s missing five to ten meals because the Social Security check ran out. It could be a single mom who needs to choose between paying the electric bill during a cold January or feeding the kids. So that’s what food insecurity means. There’s about 250,000 people in East Texas who experience food insecurity, which is pretty wild to think about. That’s more than the population of Tyler, Longview and Marshall combined, which is crazy, right?
LANDESS:
It is, and I think about the number of people that we know in everyday life who go to the refrigerator and say, gosh, there’s nothing to eat. The Blue Bell’s gone, the leftover spaghetti’s gone, and there are people who are looking at pantries that are just empty.
BUTLER:
Yeah, that exact thing actually happened to me yesterday for lunch. There’s a big thing leftover spaghetti. And I thought there was nothing, but you’re right. I mean, just think about the people who rely on the emergency food resources. And that’s what the East Texas Food Bank does best — is galvanize communities. We have such a generous community here in Northeast Texas. We serve 26 counties. In little places like Dangerfield or Arp or Mount Pleasant or Jacksonville, there are groups of people who want to help. So we have 200 partner food pantries and soup kitchens that help serve their community directly. So us working with those partners allow us to serve a maximum number of individuals.
LANDESS:
How many households do you serve throughout East Texas?
BUTLER:
Yeah, last year we served about 150,000 households ,and that’s through a variety of different programs. We have some that target specifically to children and seniors, as I mentioned before, but the majority of the food that we distribute are through those partner food pantries. The big ones you all have heard of, so like PATH in Tyler or Salvation Army Texarkana, Tyler, Lufkin, but the majority of them are small faith-based churches just in their community that want to do good.
LANDESS:
That’s amazing. Now, you’ve got a major fundraising and awareness-raising event coming up. Tell us more about that.
BUTLER:
Yeah, that’s really the key here is to raise the awareness about food insecurity, and we’re super excited to have a new signature event coming up here at the end of February. It’s called Empty Bowls, so Empty Bowls is, if anyone’s familiar with, Taste of Tyler. It was an event that we held here. We’re going to get some of the best restaurants in the area, places like Javi’s, fd’s, Twelve, many more. We’re going to have up to 15. And people can come out if they buy a ticket, they can get some of the best offerings from all these restaurant menus, get some drinks and participate in a silent auction as well.
LANDESS:
There’s another aspect of this, too, and that’s the bowl itself.
BUTLER:
You got it. So we actually are proud to have handmade bowls from a lot of Tyler ISD students. So these little kiddos put their sweat into putting these bowls in, and we’re going to have them at the event available.
LANDESS: Well, you’re cleaning the sweat out first before you serve the meal.
BUTLER: That’s true. Yeah, let the health department know there’s no sweat.
LANDESS:
Exactly, that’s a good way to look at it. Who came up with this idea, and is it something that’s been done in other markets and has done well?
BUTLER:
Yeah, Empty Bowls is actually kind of a national event that food banks rely on, not only because it’s symbolism for what the households across our service areas are experiencing. Just looking at an empty bowl on your cupboard and knowing there’s nothing that you could do to fill it, or an empty bowl when you’re trying to prepare lunch or something for your child. So the participants who come and buy a ticket for this event will be helping us fill these bowls of our neighbors.
LANDESS:
And the price for the tickets is?
BUTLER: $50 a piece.
LANDESS: And that’s pretty good. You can’t go out and feed two people. You hardly get through some of the fast food restaurants here in Tyler. I almost named one, and then I thought better of it. No, I won’t do that. You know, I had the privilege of volunteering at the East Texas Food Bank when I was at CBS 19 a number of years ago. Our whole crew came down on a Saturday. We stuffed the boxes. I didn’t do it that well. People had to come back and correct me here and there. But are those kinds of programs still available for local businesses that want to help out?
BUTLER:
Yeah, so there are three different ways that you can help the food bank. It’s time, talent and wealth. And when I was a student in college, or if I didn’t have a whole lot of funding, I really relied on being able to volunteer and help people. So we have a fantastic volunteer center where people can come out and pack boxes like you did. It is easier than you’re making it sound, but you’ll have fun.
LANDESS:
It’s my dyslexia trying to work within it. No, really it was fun, and it was certainly team building for us as well, but the idea is probably less about how many people can pack the boxes and how much awareness you provide there by having people involved and then going back and telling the story to others.
BUTLER:
Yeah, spreading the word and raising awareness. Again, that’s the second piece that we’re trying to do with Empty Bowls–is if the 300 people that get tickets, and it is limited. So, if you guys are looking to get your tickets, make sure you get them at EmptyBowlsTyler.com. There are only so many available. If half of them go home and just say, “Man, I didn’t know that there were one in five kids in East Texas who are experiencing food insecurity, 20% of the kids that you and I know,” I mean that’s a win for us. People being aware of what’s going on in their community is really important.
LANDESS:
I think sometimes we’re not faced with that. We don’t get literally face-to-face with that. My wife and I had an encounter just recently at a drugstore parking lot where a gentleman was probably I’m guessing, probably in his 60s, said, “I am so embarrassed to bother you, you know, but my wife is sick, and I’m not a drug addict. Here’s my driver’s license, and I just don’t have any money to be able to buy her lunch today.” And we gave him some money, and as we’re driving off, we looked at each other and said, “My gosh, I wonder how many paychecks most people are from that spot, from being where you really, really need the help of others.”
BUTLER:
Yeah, especially now with higher cost of groceries or at the time when the gas was so high. You can imagine if you’re living on a shoestring budget or at the end of your pay period. Gosh, I only have $1 to my name. Do I fill up my gas, or do I get gas, so I can go to work? Or do I buy a burrito so I can have dinner? You know, making that decision is difficult. What we try to do, and our partners are so good at, is provide people the dignity and respect that they deserve when they’re coming to get food. It’s hard enough to admit that you need help. We don’t want them to feel like they’re a burden on us. If we, if we’re helping them, we’re helping our community. We’re helping ourselves intrinsically, I believe. So giving them the opportunity to choose what groceries that their family and them can eat, giving them the opportunity to have a little bit of funding to go shopping and choose their food, it’s just, it’s all about dignity and respect with us.
LANDESS:
Let me ask you something: what is the range of clients that you serve here? I mean, I’m assuming young families, but it goes into retired folks and folks who are living on fixed income.
BUTLER:
Yeah, absolutely, all ages. So to participate in a food pantry, you have to be 18 or above. But we do have programming that targets children. Unfortunately they’re, we get 15, 16 year olds who are couchsurfing or even homeless. So, we have programs that specifically help them, too. And I would say probably the highest-risk demographic in East Texas are going to be seniors. You can just imagine living in a rural family home in the middle of Morris County, and the resources there are limited, and you don’t have a car that works very well, and you can’t move into the city because you already paid your mortgage for this home. You can’t take on another asset. This is where you’re stuck. And maybe your neighbors moved away and you don’t know them. Just imagine putting yourself in that position where you’re just really vulnerable. You rely on Social Security. You can’t even get to a grocery store. You buy milk at a gas station, and we all know how expensive that is. It’s just, it’s kind of scary to think about being on your own way out there. So we want to provide that support system, us and our partners do, especially for seniors.
LANDESS:
What kind of goals have you set for this next year for the East Texas Food Bank?
BUTLER:
Yeah, we’re in the middle of our strategic plan, so we’re trying to distribute 35 million pounds of food by 2025. What does that even mean? It’s so hard to picture, right? But it’s basically the way we’re going to reach that goal is focusing on distributing fresh produce. And so we’re an agrarian state here, of course, so there’s a lot of surplus produce. Something that we really focus on is buying produce specifically from Texan farmers, and that way, Texans are feeding Texans. These, these farmers are working so hard throughout the year that they have a surplus crop. Historically, they could, they would till it under. It’s just all this great food that’s going, and now, what we’ll do is we’ll pay them a pick and pack fee to get that to us, and then we can give it to people who need it the most.
LANDESS:
That’s a great program, and certainly it’s needed in this area. Any final thoughts about the mission and goals of East Texas Food Bank that you’d like to share?
BUTLER:
Yeah, we’re not only about as you said at the top, we’re not only about fighting hunger and feeding, fighting hunger, we also feed hope. And the reason we do the way we do that is get people the food that they need from day to day, week to week, month to month, but also put them in touch with other resources in the community that can help them long term. So that could be utility assistance. It could be preventative medicine. The amount of people who just don’t have the time or the ability to go take care of themselves is astonishing. And if they’re going to a food pantry, and we have UT Health right there doing preventative medical screening, they might identify that they need some help or they need some medication that’s going to help them long term. We had a distribution where the Lions Club was out there doing vision tests. And a young woman came up there and just said, “You know what? I’m here. I might as well do a vision test. Why not see if I need glasses?” And the Lions Club found something in her eye. They didn’t know what it was, so they referred her to a free eye doctor in town, and she went there and found out that she had had a stroke.
LANDESS: Oh my gosh.
BUTLER: And they didn’t know about it. Yeah, so you can imagine living with that, like surely there are side effects that she didn’t even know about. So because she came and got the food, and we and the Lions Club was so gracious with their time, she identified that and was able to get on medication that she desperately needed. And just giving people the opportunity to identify something like that about their life, that’s the hope part, I think, is giving them the holistic assistance that they need.
LANDESS:
Feeding their souls as well as feeding their bodies.
BUTLER: Love it. Exactly.
LANDESS: Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with Tim Butler, chief development officer for the East Texas Food Bank. To share, listen again or for a transcript of this interview, visit our website, uttylerradio.org. To be notified about future episodes, subscribe to UT Tyler Radio Connects on your favorite podcast platform. For UT Tyler Radio News, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
