![]() Each family is allowed three visits a month. The organization recently switched to a grocery store model that allows customers to make their own decisions and select which foods they need. Marelle Habenicht, is the executive director of the White Center Food Bank in Seattle. For many people, especially the disabled and working poor, time-consuming visits to multiple locations are impossible. It is important to note that the time McCollum dedicates to gathering these provisions is only possible because she works flexible hours as a freelance writer. And as someone with a bad back, with many pantries requiring you to wait outside in the elements, I have sat on the snowy or rainy ground more than once to sit and wait for food." ![]() But with the three-plus hours it takes to visit many of them, it's a huge time commitment. Says McCollum, "I generally visit one pantry a week. She fills in the gaps with SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), but even that isn't enough to make it through the month, so she visits the other food pantries in her area. Her nearest food pantry is open one day a month and they usually provide her with two bags of groceries. Nina McCollum, 50, in Cleveland, is a low-income mother struggling to feed her 10-year-old son. I'm not proud of any of it, but I did what I had to do. I borrowed money from my mother and didn't pay it back. I skipped meals, bounced checks and stole nickels and dimes from my son's piggy bank. I trolled the grocery aisles for markdowns. I still needed to find a way to feed my son. The box he handed me would last about a week if I were careful. The food pantry was only open one day a month, so I'd naively assumed I'd receive enough food to carry us 30 days. I was grateful and disappointed at the same time. Poverty had shrunk me.Ī man handed me a cardboard box with a dozen eggs, pancake mix, powdered milk, rice, macaroni, peanut butter and assorted canned goods. These were real people with lives, stories and families, shrunk so small they fit inside a box the size of a human hand. I thought about how each one of those index cards represented a person who had to walk through that door and ask for help like I did. I told her it was just me and my son and she wrote the information on an index card and tucked it away into a plastic box full of other cards. Dignity was the first gift they gave me.Ī woman asked for my family size. ![]() It was a time in my life when I rarely received respect from anyone, but I received it from them. I told the volunteers I needed help and they believed me. I was worried I wouldn't look needy enough, so I'd tucked my pay stubs into my purse just in case. On my first visit, I was fresh from my receptionist job, sharply dressed in a skirt suit handed down from my mother. The volunteers at the food bank were silver-haired and kind. I couldn't bear to have anyone know that I couldn't afford to feed my son. I was already ashamed to be seen chugging along in a car with a smoking tailpipe and paying for fuel with stacks of change at the gas station. There was a wide parking lot to the side, but I always parked my car around the corner, where'd I'd be less likely to be spotted. My local food pantry was in the basement of a church. I was a food bank customer myself - a single working mother whose paychecks barely covered rent, daycare, utilities and gas, let alone food. Department of Agriculture, 11.8 percent of Americans are food insecure. The truth is, many families struggle with hunger despite regular visits to their local food pantry.Īccording to the most recent report from the U.S. The first thing you learn when you rely on the food bank to feed your family is that you can't rely on the food bank to feed your family. Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images Food banks say rethinking our donations could help them stretch their money. Even with visits to the local food pantry, many families struggle to get enough to eat.
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