Feed 120,000 Needy People? A 6-Year-Old Could Do It

Last June, I introduced Tonic readers to then five-year-old Phoebe Russell, who had raised $3,736 for the San Francisco Food Bank by collecting cans and soliciting donations from her family and preschool alumni network. The project started as a community service project, which children at her preschool, With Care in San Francisco's Mission district, are required to do before "graduating" onto kindergarten.

She quickly surpassed her goal of raising $1,000, and ended up pulling in enough funding to provide almost 18,000 meals to the city's hungry. Due to in-kind donations of food and other services, the Food Bank is able to leverage cash gifts multiple times over, so Phoebe's $3,736 cash gift turned into $33,624 worth of food.

Though Phoebe completed her project when she presented a check for the total amount to Paul Ash, the Food Bank's Executive Director, she didn't stop there. When people got wind of her story, here on Tonic and elsewhere, they wanted to help too — and more and more donations continued pouring into the Food Bank in Phoebe's name.

Phoebe's impact has been growing. By earlier this week, she had quintupled her initial gift, inspiring $20,202 in donations to the Food Bank — enough to feed almost 100,000 people. Then a massive donation of 30,000 pounds of chicken from Tyson Foods on Thursday made her impact even greater. The chicken, which will allow the Food Bank to offer an additional 23,734 meals, brings the total number of meals Phoebe is responsible for to 119,936.

If one little girl can keep that many people from going hungry in this tough economy, what can the rest of us be doing to help?

Photo by Madeline Pfeiffer.