Woolworth helps rid the Bay Area of hunger problem

By SCOTT STEINBERG

Woolworth Nursery in Cupertino is in the midst of a food drive for the hunger bank, America's Second Harvest.

It's the first year Woolworth has engineered the project, but already the benefits of the partnership seems obvious to the nursery.

"We are very happy, very glad to have members of the community responding to this," store manager Kimberly Duggan said. "As a company as a whole, we've been looking at ways to give back to the community.

"I was particularly concerned with hunger," she continued. "The idea that children should be hungry is appalling to me, and so we wanted to help out at a time when people maybe weren't thinking about it."

And so Woolworth has set out receptacles in which customers can deposit canned food goods. For each donation, the customer receives a raffle prize that may yield to the lucky few some coveted floor plants.

In addition, proceeds from every floor plant sold from Feb. 8 to Feb. 18 will go directly to Second Harvest.

That means, in coordination with Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year, the garden shop has received quite an aesthetic boost, as nursery employees have gone berserk with their "green genius" to display flowers at their finest.

Woolworth, which will formally change its name to Summer Winds in mid-March, also invited three guest speakers to further celebrate the 10 days of the Flower & Garden Charity Event.

On Feb. 9, Patricia St. John spoke about gardening for children. Weegie Caughlan gave his Feb. 10 lecture on "Living with Orchids." The final lecture, Feb. 16 at 2. p.m., features Seann Zenja, who will delight with "Feng Shui: From the Heart and Home."

While the Woolworth-Second Harvest partnership is in its first year, Second Harvest has been chipping away at the national hunger problem for 42 years.

In 1960, businessman John Van Hengel founded a food kitchen in Phoenix. Because of an unexpectedly enthusiastic donating response, along with federal legislation such as the 1976 Tax Reform Act, by the 1970s, Second Harvest had located its headquarters in Chicago. At the start of 2002, it had 200 food banks in the United States.

According to Second Harvest, they feed 26 million Americans per year, 8 million of which are children. The expressed goal of the organization is "to end hunger in America."

Quite an ambition ... baby steps ... buy a plant.

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