Tasty gift helps take bite out of hunger

Friday, May 31, 2002 | 2:18 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: June 1, 2002

National Hunger Awareness Day Wednesday means a lot to Wayne Clark, the supervisor of Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada's Lied Dining Room, who survived a war and later overcame homelessness and hunger.

"I think back to when I was in Vietnam and we'd go into a village and give the women and children C-rations and they were just so grateful because they were so hungry," Clark, 54, said Thursday as he prepared his walk-in freezer for the largest meat donation in the local nonprofit group's history.

"For the most part, the people we feed here are just as grateful that we help them. And we're grateful there are companies out there that help us do it."

Clark was referring to Tyson Foods Inc., which on Wednesday will truck in nearly 19 tons of chicken products, tortillas and gravy fixings. The 37,893 pounds far outweighs the previous largest gift of 15,000 pounds of meat products from a Las Vegas company that went out of business.

David Little, the 33-year-old head cook of the Catholic Charities kitchen, who was raised in Las Vegas and also was once homeless and hungry, said he expects to produce 178,000 meals over six months from the Tyson gift.

"This will allow us to create meals other than soups, which often is all we can make given what we sometimes have to work with," he said. "The meals we serve are balanced. But this gift will enable us to make them even more balanced with a number of baked and fried dishes."

Catholic Charities is one of several agencies in 21 cities nationwide to benefit from Tyson Foods' generosity this year.

Tyson, in three years of partnership with the Share Our Strength anti-hunger organization, has provided nearly 10 million pounds of food to 250 hunger-relief agencies. On Wednesday Tyson will deliver 1 million pounds of food to nonprofit groups' kitchens throughout the United States.

"When we started this program in 1999, it was projected that Tyson Foods would donate 6.5 million pounds of food in three years," said Arlison Osborne, spokeswoman for Share Our Strength. "We had no idea it would get this big."

At a 10 a.m. ceremony Wednesday Catholic Charities will honor Tyson and Share Our Strength for their generosity locally. Tyson Foods' mascot "Buddy the Chicken" will serve chicken appetizers at the event at 1502 N. Main St.

The National Hunger Awareness Day festivities will culminate at 6:30 p.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with the Taste of the Nation fund-raiser. Local chefs will offer some of their finest dishes for public tasting. About 80 percent of the proceeds will go to local charities that feed the poor.

The Wednesday shipment to Catholic Charities will include 35,600 pounds of chicken patties, breast strips, wings and fillets. An additional 2,293 pounds of tortillas and gravy products also will be delivered, Osborne said.

Little, a Chaparral High School graduate who prior to falling on hard times worked as a cook at local resorts, said chicken is one of the more popular dishes, but, as of late, Catholic Charities could afford to serve it only on Sundays.

"Now, for a while, we will be able to increase chicken meals to two to three times a week," Little said. "But we don't want people to think that this gift alone will solve our food problems. We are always in need of donations."

Little says, for example, the facility is out of turkey, which is not always donated in large quantities as it is during the yuletide season.

"There is a misconception that we depend on food drives and other donations for the kitchen," said Clark, who supervises a staff of nine paid employees, 27 program assistants and 70 volunteers.

"Occasionally, food show operators give us the food from their displays or a restaurant closes and gives us its stock or we get a large donation of a single item during food drives. But, for the most part, we buy a lot of what we serve."

The Catholic Charities Dining Room serves about 1,500 people a day. Last year 479,000 meals were served. Those numbers are expected to escalate sharply this year because of the poor economy and the opening of additional homeless beds.

Osborne noted that Hunger Awareness Day couldn't have come at a better time because poor children "are getting out of school for the summer and are no longer getting free lunches."

"More parents are faced with the dilemma of how they are going to feed their children."

As many as 33 million Americans are at risk of hunger -- one of every five of them children, Osborne said.