[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[December 22, 1999]
[Pages 2328-2330]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the D.C. Central Kitchen
December 22, 1999

    Thank you so much. Well, let me begin by thanking Robert 
Egger and all the students, the graduates, the 
staff, the volunteers who have made D.C. Central Kitchen one of the 
greatest sources of community strength in our entire Nation. I want to 
thank Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, your Member of Congress; and Representative Tim 
Roemer from Indiana, for joining us today. I want 
to thank my longtime friend, your DC Council Chair, Charlene Drew 
Jarvis. And I think we have four other 
city council members here; thank you all for coming. And I want to thank 
Harris Wofford, the gentleman who runs our 
national service effort, and the AmeriCorps members who are here today. 
And Harris, thanks for the jacket. We now have over 150,000 young 
Americans who have served in AmeriCorps since we established it in 1994. 
That's a pretty good record, and I'm very proud of them.
    I just wanted to also say, most importantly, thank you to Donna 
Simon. I am very proud of her. And she did a 
good job today, didn't she--and her daughter. Now, last year we made 
lasagna. Today I had to put the filling in the bell peppers. And I did 
it with Steve, Melody, and Michele; they're all 
better than I am. But I love working again this year. I had a good time, 
and I learned about three other people.
    I want to say three things about D.C. Central Kitchen and its 
recipes. First of all, this place offers a recipe for opportunity. It's 
an empowerment classroom. You heard Donna's 
story, and one of the things I learned a long time ago in life is that 
everybody's got a story. Everybody's got a story. And most of them are 
pretty interesting. And they're all still being written. And the nice 
thing about your life story is you get to get up and write a page every 
day, and you have to decide; no matter how bad things are, no matter 
what bad has happened to you, no matter what mistakes you've made, you 
still get to get up and write a new page every day. And this place helps 
people write good pages in that story.
    I want to tell you, last year, in addition to Donna, I met a lot of other interesting people here last year. 
I met a man last year named Francis Hill; stand 
up here. I want to tell you about this guy. He had been living on the 
streets

[[Page 2329]]

for 10 years before he got into this program. Right after he graduated 
he went to work at the Cafe Atlantico, a pretty high-tone joint not very 
far from here. [Laughter] Within weeks he was promoted. In fact, someone 
on my staff talked to his boss, who said he is by far the best worker he 
has ever had. He has now moved into his own apartment, bought his own 
car, just got engaged to his long-time girlfriend, Wanda. Good for you; 
that was a good thing to do. And he proposed while cooking a meal for 
her at home, a side benefit of being in this program here. [Laughter] So 
this place is a recipe for opportunity. Thank you for being Exhibit A.
    The D.C. Central Kitchen also offers a recipe for service. Every 
year--listen to this--every single year here, 5,000 volunteers roll up 
their sleeves and give something back to their community, people like 
Jose Andres, one of the premier young chefs in 
America. Is he here today? Stand up here, Jose. Now, despite the, 
literally, crazy demands of his job, he comes here every single week to 
share his passion and skills with all the students, and he encourages 
other friends to join him every time he comes.
    Just imagine what we could achieve if everyone in this community and 
in every community where there is a need like this rose to the call of 
citizen service the way you have. Thank you very 
much. We honor you, sir.
    Finally, I'd like to point out D.C. Central Kitchen also does offer 
a recipe for alleviating hunger. And I want everyone in America to pay 
attention to this, too. We're ending this century on a very high note. 
We have the strongest economy in my lifetime. We have the lowest 
unemployment in 30 years, the lowest African-American and Hispanic 
unemployment ever recorded, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years. All 
those statistics are very good, and it's all true, and it's wonderful.
    But when I left church Sunday morning, there were still a lot of 
people in Lafayette Park lined up behind those vans waiting to get fed. 
And I think it is very important that we not forget that with all of the 
increasing number of jobs--and some of you represent that--with a 
decreasing poverty--some of you represent that--the number of people 
that are in really dire straits is still very, very significant, for--a 
lot of them have a lot of medical reasons, mental health reasons, other 
reasons. But they're still out there. They're on the streets. They have 
no food to eat. Requests for emergency food in this community have, in 
fact, been increasing in recent years. So I want to thank you for that.
    This place takes food that would otherwise go to waste and provides 
3,000 meals a day--think of that--just the D.C. Central Kitchen, 3,000 
meals a day. Now, I want to send out another message to America. There 
are people who need food in every community of any size in this country. 
The Department of Agriculture estimates that 96 billion pounds--let me 
say that again, 96 billion--not million, billion--pounds--of food is 
lost every year that could be consumed, from slightly bruised fruit at 
wholesale markets to unsold trays of lasagna at restaurants; not my 
lasagna. [Laughter]
    So you remember what Mr. Egger said at the beginning of this. He 
said, ``You know, last year when I was here there were 21 community 
kitchens like this one around the country. Now there are going to be 
more than twice that many in this year.'' And you should be very proud 
of that. Among all the other messages, I hope this message will get out: 
In every community, civic-minded people ought to take an inventory of 
how much food is being wasted, where it is, how to gather it up, how to 
give it to the churches, the synagogues, the mosques, and whoever else 
has a homeless mission that will take care of that food and get it out. 
When you think about the amount of food that has been wasted and the 
number of people you see lined up at every soup kitchen, at every 
community stop, at every place, not just here but around the country, it 
is appalling.
    And all we need is a system like you have in every community in 
America, and there wouldn't be any hungry people in this country. 
Ninety-six billion pounds of food is more than enough to feed all the 
hungry people in America, and it's just being wasted.
    So I hope that communities--I hope that where this message goes out, 
if this is a problem in other communities, they'll look at the D.C. 
Central Kitchen model, and they'll go to work trying to save the wasted 
food. This is a job that all of us have to do--government but also 
community service organizations. And I think that what we've tried to do 
is to emphasize the role of the community organization and to make sure 
that they knew what we had in terms of resources that could help.
    A few years ago, I signed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food 
Donation Act, which now

[[Page 2330]]

makes it a lot easier for private companies to donate food and for 
people like you to prepare and distribute it. Our Agriculture Secretary, 
Dan Glickman, has gotten the whole Government 
working on food rescue programs like this one. And now the Agriculture 
Department is working around the country to form new grassroots 
partnerships to fight hunger, to increase local food production, and to 
help low income families move into independence. But we've got to have 
the support of volunteers, and we have to have the willingness of the 
community.
    We come here at holiday season because everybody's thinking about 
this. But what we should do at holiday season is to make commitments 
that last all year long, not just at the holiday season. The AmeriCorps 
members here--I want to say again how proud I am of you and what a 
testament you have been to the proposition that working with others is 
not a burden, it is a joy; it is not just a duty; it is a privilege. And 
whether you are preparing meals or teaching a child to read or painting 
an old school, you always get more than you give. And most of us get out 
of this life ahead of where we would be if all we got is just what we 
deserve. [Laughter] And I think this is really an important thing to 
remember at this season.
    So again, I want to thank all of you. Thank you, Robert 
Egger; thank you, graduates; thank you 
trainees; thank you, staff and volunteers and supporters of the D.C. 
Central Kitchen. You have captured the spirit of the season, and I hope 
others will catch it from you.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:12 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to 
Harris Wofford, chief executive officer, Corporation for Public Service; 
and Robert Egger, director, Donna Simon, graduate, and Steve Pritchett, 
Melody Swint, and Michele Rhyne, trainees, D.C. Central Kitchen.