The Good Shepherd Food-Bank was first a dream to feed Maine’s neediest people.

The pantry’s modern and spacious warehouse in Auburn was once a dream to feed people better.

Now, there is a dream for the pantry to turn a used beverage truck into a rolling grocery to feed people even better.

The pantry and its warehouse are dreams come true because pantry founder JoAnn Pike and supporters of her work have been relentless in their mission. It will take that kind of commitment to make real the new dream to regularly truck millions of pounds of food into Maine’s 16 counties to feed thousands who now go hungry.

The pantry is hoping to win $25,000 this week in Garelick Farms’ Over the Moon Dream BIG Contest to help fund this dream, but the dream is absolutely worth chasing, regardless of the outcome of the contest.

There’s a difference between missing lunch and being hungry, and missing so many meals that hunger becomes chronic.

According to the Maine Millennium Commission on Hunger and Food Security, which studied hunger in Maine during a six-year period, “Hunger is more than a hungry person. Although hunger occurs as an individual phenomenon, its impact affects and diminishes the lives of everyone in the community.”

Hungry children cannot concentrate in classrooms. Hungry parents, worried about their families, are less productive at work than those who have reliable sources of food. Poor nutrition leads to serious health problems, elevating costs of health care and social services.

If not hungry ourselves, we must pay attention to those who are.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will consider Maine hunger-free when, over two years, 96 percent of our households are “food secure,” meaning people have access to enough food to remain healthy and active.

Maine isn’t even close.

The USDA estimates nearly one in every 10 Mainers does not have adequate access to food. That’s something like 120,000 of our neighbors going hungry often enough to compromise emotional and physical well-being and basic human dignity.

The Maine Millennium Commission on Hunger and Food Security crafted a 10-point action plan and recommended four detailed public policy changes, covering comprehensive energy, health, tax, education and housing policies, all of which will take time.

The Good Shepherd Food-Bank’s attack on hunger is immediate and efficient. The agency gathers a vast amount of food, sorts it and readies it for pickup.

The pantry’s newest dream, using a truck already donated by Federal Distributors, is to create a mobile food pantry to deliver food across the state. It would be the first of its kind in New England and would move Maine forward in its goal to end hunger.

It’s a dream, but given the tremendous track record of the dedicated dreamers at the Good Shepherd Food-Bank, this one deserves community and corporate support to make it happen.