Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks and for many it is also a time for giving. I thought I would show how GeoCommons can be used to promote giving back this holiday. One way many individuals and families give during Thanksgiving is by donating to or volunteering at a local food bank’s Thanksgiving feast. This year, these feasts are particularly important with so many suffering from the economic crisis.

Feeding America is a network of individuals, local food banks, national offices, and corporate and government partners who work together to try to solve America’s hunger crisis. With 205 food banks across the country, they were a good resource to put together a quick dataset and map.

Below is a map showing all of the Feeding America food banks by the number of pounds of food distributed annually. The map can be used to find a food bank near you.

Click on the map to see the interactive version in Maker!

By clicking on the icon, you access all of the information on that food bank including the services it offers and its website. You can find out detailes on how to help for thanksgiving by calling or on the food bank’s website.

Their website also has a neat map of their own which provides hunger and poverty statistics for each state.

 

2 Responses to Dataset of the Day: Thanksgiving Giving and Food Banks

  1. Normalize by population to segregate the food bank information from population differences by city.

  2. Bill Greer says:

    Thank you for your suggestion. I usually do normalize data however because each bank serves to a different geographic level (county, multiple counties, city, state, neighborhood), it would be difficult to do so properly. The dataset does contain an attribute for number of counties served but since counties can vary greatly in their population I dont think that would be the best way to do it.

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