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I salute the service providers with whom we have the honor of collaborating. Organizations like Foodnet Meals on Wheels and Loaves and Fishes, agencies like Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS) and Family & Children’s Service of Ithaca. They – alongside other service partners – strengthen the making of Tompkins County a livable place for all.
Today, food insecurity is on the rise in the United States. The USDA recently released data showing that 12.8% of households are food insecure (up from 10.2% in 2021). Homelessness, at 653,0100 across the United States in 2023, is at its highest level ever – 12% higher than one year ago. These numbers should not just give us pause, but also to see them for what they are: a scandal in the richest country in the world. I for one am reminded that if we seek to be a “first responder,” honoring the human dignity of each person must be at the core of our outreach.
When my college classmates opened a soup kitchen at Broadway Presbyterian Church and a shelter at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church on the upper West Side of Manhattan four decades ago, I did not anticipate the economics of exclusion and the denial of opportunity that have contributed to making life so difficult for so many. I did, however, see the impacts of loneliness, alienation, illness, and loss of family supports and single-room occupancy housing on people with whom I conversed: it could easily have been my friends or family or me.
We are renaming the fund that supports community agencies through the next two year cycle, the United Tompkins Impact Fund. We aim to have an impact on both the experience of poverty and the dynamics which lead to poverty. To achieve our goals, I invite you to participate in our campaign, United in Action, so that we can be “United Tompkins” in bearing light in the lives of our neighbors who are not “other” but rather “us”. You are part of making this vision a reality. Let’s take the power of the joy of this season, sauté it with generosity, and strengthen our community’s capacity to thrive in ways beyond our imagination.
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