FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) - Ken Kupchick had no choice but to volunteer for Antioch Youth & Family.
Not once he got to know its founder Charlotte Tidwell and grasped how much work went into the nonprofit, he said.
Kupchick became the director of marketing and development in 2010 and met Tidwell roughly a year later, he told the Southwest Times Record (https://bit.ly/2hxup7f ). The River Valley Regional Food Bank in Fort Smith works with hunger relief organizations in the area, including Antioch for Youth and Family.
“She’s captaining a very large ship and making it look easy, but the truth of the matter is, it’s not easy,” Kupchick said. “It’s laborious. It’s somewhat tedious. Everyone you help is equally complex in the sense that it’s one thing to just hand somebody a bag of food, but it’s another thing to understand what compelled them to ask for help and Charlotte does that.”
Kupchick began to understand the reality of the problem of poverty when he had to tell a woman who came in with her children asking for food that the food pantries are the ones that actually give out food and the food bank distributes it, but she could go to a pantry for food.
“She started to cry, and I thought these were tears of joy because I had provided a solution,” he said.
Instead, she said, “You don’t understand. I only have a quarter tank of gas, and I need that gas. I may have a job interview on Monday, and I have to be there. I have to have this job, and if you send me five miles this way and 10 miles that way, I’m not going to have any gas left.’”
A single mom with three children had a quarter tank of gas to her name, and since then, the food bank has tried to address more long-term problems, instead of only immediate needs.
“So that’s why I volunteer,” Kupchick said.
Some of the long-term problems that the food bank, as well as Antioch, are trying to address are that of nutrition and a culture of health, he said.
A few years ago, Kupchick and Tidwell worked together on their first nutrition and wellness fair, where they brought in vendors such as hospitals, clinics and nonprofits to educate attendees on their health.
“If anything on the planet impresses me, its execution,” Tidwell said.
Tidwell said that it’s one thing to talk about problems and make plans, but Kupchick is a broad thinking person who can execute plans.
“He’s just not a unilateral thinker,” she said.
Kupchick spoke of how obesity and poverty go hand-in-hand, which leads people to believe that poor people can’t be hungry if they’re overweight. To the contrary, healthy food being more expensive than unhealthy food poses a deep predicament.
There’s also a misunderstanding in regards to poor people buying things like beer and cigarettes.
“When you don’t have money, you vacation through your foods and through those small indulgences …; When you don’t have money, you don’t go on ski vacations or beach vacations. You get a little tattoo and that’s just your little vacation,” he said.
Additionally, kids are not required to take home economics in school where they learn about nutrition and how to cook healthy meals, he said.
“We do need these kids moving and we do need them understanding that their bodies are temples …; Their bodies are the machines that will take them where they want to go,” Kupcheck said.
Kupchick was not involved in nonprofits or volunteerism until he got laid off from his job at ABF during the recession, he said. He had to learn to be frugal.
One day at the grocery store, he saw an older woman who reminded him of his mother shopping for a chuck roast. Wanting to learn, he watched this woman - clearly a pro - determine which was the best chuck roast.
He watched her put a chuck roast in her basket, go to her wallet, count her cash, put the chuck roast back and keep walking. He realized she had been looking for the smallest one, and she didn’t have enough money for it.
“What if that was my mother?” Kupcheck said.
The food bank needed someone to help with fundraising and community awareness.
“I had never even heard of the food bank before,” Kupchick said. “For many of us, we have a veiled curtain, and it comes down at Grand Avenue.”
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Information from: Southwest Times Record, https://www.swtimes.com/
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