From a Western Springs Office, Helping the World Feed Itself

There’s a bitter irony to world hunger: it’s actually not most prevalent in crowded cities, but in the very rural lands where food is cultivated.

So with the right small jump start—the right education, the right collaborations, the right assets—many of the world’s nearly one billion chronically hungry might well grow themselves crops enough to sustain a worthy standard of living. That’s the theory that drives the Western Springs-based Foods Resource Bank.

“I think a lot of people will often think, oh, somebody’s hungry, let’s get them some food,” explained organization president Marv Baldwin. “Well, that’s fine for a day or two, or a week or a month. But what do they do next year? Our focus is on helping people learn to feed themselves—teach a man to fish, teach a woman to farm.”

Founded as a Christian charity in 1999 in Virginia (and later relocating to Michigan, where it retains an office,) the Foods Resource Bank moved its central operations to the basement office at 4479 Central Ave. shortly after Baldwin, a Village resident, became president in early 2005. And from this unassuming office (actually, only three-fifths of it,) the charity works to spread hope of a better life to impoverished people in 32 countries.

The central fundraising instrument of the FRB is the “Growing Project,” a community effort to raise both money and awareness by joining their means and skills to earn money specifically to fund overseas programs. (About 210 Growing Projects nationwide account for 80 percent of FRB funds.)

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For example, the of Western Springs is partnered with a similar church organization in Mazon (about an hour’s drive to the southwest) to provide input costs into extra farmland, which Mazon’s farmers can then cultivate at returns three to five times higher than otherwise possible. All proceeds then go to FRB programs to build sustainable farming worldwide: agriculture supports agriculture.

The benefits of the model, Baldwin said, go beyond just effective finance. The Growing Projects bring rural farmers together for a common cause, and provide suburbanites (who often take field trips to meet their collaborators and see their Growing Project fields) a tangible touchstone for relating to the realities of growing food.

“Suddenly you’ve got a bunch of city folks who are thinking about farming, who look at rain in a different way, look at the concept of farming a different way,” said Baldwin, adding that it fosters brotherhood between communities as well. “What starts out to be this inclination to help somebody overseas—which it is—now suddenly becomes this community-building type thing as well.”

Those funds go into over 55 programs, run through local groups who partner with the FRB’s 15 Christian member organizations, all aimed at empowering poor communities to practice better agriculture. Just like with Growing Projects, this can involve effecting community collaboration—or developing water sources, or crop storage, or getting farmers access to acres of land to farm.

FRB Executive Director of Overseas Programming Bev Abma recently returned from a mission to Central America; in the highlands of western Guatemala, she helped the locals learn to make their own organic fertilizer (chemical fertilizer can be expensive, difficult to transport and complicated to use.) She said that FRB does more than just teach farming—they hope to build up a dignified way of life for people.

“One of my favorite questions [to ask locals] is… what if life could be good?” Abma said. “To go back to a community two years later and not even get a chance to sit down but to have the leader of the community say… these were our dreams, we’ve accomplished these, these ones we’re still working on… that for me is what really gives me joy.”

Abma and colleague Angela Boss also emphasized that Americans’ beliefs about life (and imminent danger) in third-world countries are often as wrongheaded as foreigners’ ideas about the United States—even in North Korea, where FRB has a program and where both women have visited.

“I’m always pleasantly surprised at how our common stereotypes are wrong,” Boss said. “One of my favorite things about international travel is having all of my preconceived ideas blown away.”

In just a little over a decade, the Foods Resource Bank has gone from an idea to a lifesaver for thousands. Many of its early programs have “graduated,” and are no longer receiving direct support.

However, the next step for the organization may be to facilitate actual investment in these graduated farms and villages—a place in which a gap exists for said investments. Most investments in third-world countries are $10 million and up; these developing agricultural systems require smaller, more manageable infusions, an arena in which few investors are currently playing. The Foods Resource Bank hopes to change that.

Locally, FRB’s Western Springs connection runs strongest through First Congregational (Baldwin is also a member,) which recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of their Mazon-partnered Growing Project. The church partnership celebrates an annual Harvest Festival each October in Mazon, to visit their partners and see their project (and perhaps ride a combine harvester.)

“We support organizations that are local, urban and global,” said First Congregational’s Associate Minister Katherine Willis Pershey. “But often times we’re farther removed from the global organizations, because most of them are headquartered elsewhere.

“The fact that Food Resource Bank is headquartered in Western Springs… there’s just a really strong sense of connection that makes the world feel a little bit smaller.”

Indeed, while the work of FRB mostly takes place in the field in far-flung locales, its base roots run right back to 4479 Central; this atop the community-building focus of the Growing Projects certainly establish the charity as a devoted denizen of the Village.

“It is kind of neat that Western Springs has an international organization that works in 32 different countries around the world, and we’re based in the basement of the old VFW hall,” Baldwin admitted. “That is kind of cool!”

To learn more about the Foods Resource Bank, visit their website. A BBB review of the charity is also available.