Master's Degrees to Fit Your Busy Schedule Madonna University, our At that it is close to home." No questions are ever asked about the recipients of food assistance, so there are no breakdowns — other than the figure cited by Yad Ezra — of how many Jews are helped by Gleaners. Despite the fact that there are no distinctions made as to the religion of recipients, some of the- fund-raising efforts by the Gleaners in the greater Jewish community have been hampered in the past by the mistaken belief that it is a Catholic organization. Gleaners founder Gonya was a Jesuit brother, and one of his co- founders was Lewis Hickson, execu- tive director of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, the largest agency Gleaners served. Gleaners began when a load of frozen potatoes was supposed to go to the Capuchins and there wasn't /-- enough room to store it. The Detroit Catholic Archdiocese put money into Gleaners to get it started, but so did the food service industry and the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce. Today, Jews, Catholics and other religions are rep- resented on the Gleaners board. As Loewenstein puts it, "We are a nonsectarian organization and our mission is to help the needy." On a recent day at the vast Gleaners warehouse on Beaufait Street in Detroit's near-downtown east side industrial corridor, a truck was being unloaded from Forgotten Harvest, the Southfield-based perishable food res- cue program. "They go around to restaurants and pick up food. Then they come to the food bank to pick up some of our perishable foods, like fresh produce and dry milk, to add to their foods. Their van then goes to a soup kitchen or shelter or day care center and drops off the food," said Loewenstein. The agencies using Gleaners pay 12 cents a pound for the food they pick up from Gleaners. But since Gleaners' cost of operation is 21 cents a pound, the difference has to made up through fund-raising. The Gleaners warehouse is almost 90,000 square feet with a storage capacity of 1.5 million pounds of food, a little more than one month's supply. During the height of Detroit's industrial boom, the building was home to a lumber company that manufactured wooden car bodies. Between the main warehouse and new hub, or distribution, sites in Taylor, Hamtramck and the Delray area of southwest Detroit, there are \Th 35 employees. Like Loewenstein, the employees are clearly driven by their mission. When Gleaners began operations in 1977, it rented space on the first floor of the warehouse. Today, its grown to three floors. In the second phase of the expansion, Gleaners added freezer/coolers occupying a total of 7,500 square feet (82,000 cubic feet). Everywhere you look, food is bountiful at Gleaners. There are fresh potatoes and apples from Michigan farmers, a truckload of grapefruit from Florida. The freezers are filled with corn dogs and chicken because the boxes might be damaged or the product didn't sell. The bounty could have been a result of over-production or mistakes, or maybe even a test product. Without Gleaners, all this food to feed the hungry would have gone to a landfill. When food comes into the receiv- ing area, the workers give it a bar code for tracking in the computer sys- tem. Still, they never know from day to day what's coming in. Gleaners spends transportation dollars on picking up food. The call sometimes comes through Second Harvest, the national association of food banks. There are 180 nationally, 12 of them in Michigan. Gleaners even has crates at the assembly line at the Kellogg cereal factories in Battle Creek, Mich., to rescue overstuffed or underfilled boxes right at production. When there's enough to fill a truck, the cereal is delivered to the Gleaners warehouse. Another major donor is Frito-Lay. If there's too much air blown into a bag of snack food, it will burst when it is shipped to the mountain states. Instead of going to the dump, the bags come to Gleaners. During the past nine months, 14.2 million pounds of food have been dis- tributed from the Gleaners ware- house, or 14.2 million meals -- the rule of thumb being that one pound equals a meal. That nine-month total almost matches the 14.6 million poilinds dis- tributed during the previous 12 months. If this rate continues, Gleaners easily could distribute 17-18 million pounds of food this year. Is that a symptom of more people needing food or Gleaners doing a bet- ter job of getting more food through the system? Loewenstein said it is a little of both. master's degrees in business are designed for working adults. Classes are offered during the evening and on weekends, complemented by on-line courses. 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