Last night I went with the youth in my church to our county food bank. They talked about what kinds of people they serve in the community and the kinds of programs that they run. They gave us a tour of the facility and then let us decorate paper lunch bags and fill them with snacks for kids.
During the tour the lady said that they put together boxes that families can come and pick up once a week (about 150 families come in daily)--basically the prepared food boxes gave each family 1.5 cans of food per person per day. Thinking about that just brought tears to my eyes. Can you imagine rationing out your family's food like that? Can you imagine that the only food you have for your kids would be coming out of cans from a community center? It's not even enough food--you'd still be hungry. That must be a scary and hard position to be in.
It made me really want to do more to help. I'm gonna be thinking about this for awhile. I hope I come up with some good ideas.
2 comments:
Here are some things I do to help the food bank not near enough but I have it in my mind at least.
We have a food "tithing box". When I go shopping I try to buy and extra can of food, bag of beans, jar of peanut butter, just one item that is non perishable and I put it in this box. When food drives come around I have a nice supply of food I can already donate. I generally add much more too it, but it helps with cost and planning.
When I go to the grocery store I look for opportunity to pay extra to the food bank. At least Albertsons has coupons at the cashiers that you can grab from 1 dollar to as much as you want to donate. Sometimes I will find bags already filled with items for the food bank and I will buy those. I do this throughout the year since donations are always needed not just at holiday times.
Wow--what an amazing thing to do and learn about. I agree--it is something that brings tears to my eyes also. It's a good thing to think about. I'm going to have to find our local food bank here...
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