[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 52 (Monday, December 28, 1998)]
[Pages 2518-2519]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the D.C. Central Kitchen

December 21, 1998

    Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm delighted to be here, delighted to 
see all of you. I want to thank Robert Egger and everybody here at the 
D.C. Central Kitchen for the magnificent job they do. Thank you, Harris 
Wofford, and all the wonderful AmeriCorps volunteers. Thank you, 
Secretary Glickman. Thank you, Tony Hall, for a lifetime of commitment 
to the cause embodied by this endeavor here.
    I would like to thank Jill Muller, who worked with us, the young 
AmeriCorps volunteer. I'd like to thank Donna Simmons, the trainee who 
worked with us, who is very happy about the work she's doing. She has 
six children at home getting ready to celebrate Christmas. And this 
Christmas and the Christmases in the future, I think, will be brighter 
because of the work that has been done here.
    I want to thank Susan Callahan for not only training Donna but for 
training Hillary and me to mass-produce lasagna today. [Laughter] We 
got--I think Jill said we got a reasonably good evaluation. We finished 
our task; we made enough lasagna for 500 people to eat in a timely and, 
I hope, edible fashion. But we enjoyed it very, very much.
    There is another person, who is not here, I'd like to acknowledge 
who has been a great supporter of these causes, and that's Congresswoman 
Eleanor Holmes Norton. She is elsewhere in the city today, hosting an 
event for needy children.
    I would like the members of the press and, through them, the public 
who are not here to know that since this remarkable organization began 
on January 20, 1989, D.C. Central Kitchen has taken 3\1/2\ million 
pounds of surplus donated food, turned them into 5.5 million meals for 
men in homeless shelters, women in battered women's shelters, children 
in after-school and child care programs. In the process, D.C. Central 
Kitchen has provided job skills and opportunities in training for a 
couple hundred Americans who needed it, with a very, very high 
percentage of people getting jobs and keeping them after 6 months.
    You have found here an incredible, I think, an incredible social 
recipe to combine things that others may be working on but have never 
been quite put together in this same way. Every day, as much as we hate 
to admit it, there are people in America who get up hungry and who go to 
bed hungry. Yet, every day 25 percent of our food supply--25 percent--is 
wasted, from slightly bruised fruit at wholesale markets to unsold trays 
of lasagna at restaurants. While the food is going to waste, so are the 
abilities of millions of Americans who want to work but can't because 
they don't have skills for which there is a demand in today's economy.
    The number of food-service jobs in our country is large and growing. 
Food-service wages are rising at twice the rate of inflation today. 
Therefore, the secret recipe is to take the wasted food and the wasted 
capacity, train people, put the food there, and solve

[[Page 2519]]

the problem. It is a remarkable achievement. And as has already been 
said, the private sector has made major contributions to this endeavor.
    I'd like to just acknowledge, if I might, the fact that--and this is 
something that I think is maybe most important of all--D.C. Central 
Kitchen has become a real model for others. And now there are similar 
efforts in 11 cities, from Chicago to Louisville, with 14 more slated to 
start by this time next year. So I think that is the ultimate test of 
your success when people copy you. That is the sincerest form of 
flattery, I think, and I know you're proud of that.
    In 1996 I signed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act 
to try to have Government do more to help. It gives limited liability 
protection to companies that donate food and people like those who work 
here to process and redistribute the food. Secretary Glickman had a lot 
to do with the passage of that law, and I thank him. I'd also like to 
thank the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, and Labor, for 
providing food, training, and other resources. I know the Labor 
Department supports the training program here. So the Government can be 
a good partner.
    And finally, as a matter of personal pride, I want to say again, I 
thank the AmeriCorps members. When we started AmeriCorps, I thought it 
would catch on. But to be frank, there's been even more interest in it 
and more commitment from more different kinds of people to serve their 
country in more different ways than even I could have imagined. And I 
thank all of you for being the best of America at this Christmas season. 
God bless you, and thank you very much.
    Now, Hillary alluded to this, but I think I can't leave the 
microphone without saying that in 1993 in January, D.C. Central Kitchen 
baked 28,000 saxophone-shaped, butter-almond cookies for my first 
Inaugural. [Laughter] And it's about time I came here to pay them back--
and also cakes for the second Inaugural. I'm grateful for that.
    I hope that everyone who sees the report on the news of all of our 
being here today will be inspired to follow suit at this Christmas 
season. The most important gifts we give are those that we give to those 
who need it the most, who may never know our names or remember our faces 
but who receive the gifts in the genuine spirit of the season.
    And to all of you, those of you who are trainees, those of you who 
are volunteers, those of you who are AmeriCorps workers--all of you--I 
thank you. And most of all, Mr. Egger, I thank you and the people here 
at D.C. Central Kitchen. And I hope that as the news of this event beams 
across the country tonight, in the remaining days before Christmas and 
then in all the days of the new year, more people will want to make the 
kind of contribution to our common humanity that you have.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:12 p.m. in the lunchroom. In his remarks, 
he referred to Robert Egger, director, Susan Callahan, executive chef, 
and Donna Simmons, trainee, D.C. Central Kitchen.