While our mission is to help pets, our larger goal is to help the family not have to make a choice about who to feed. Access to pet food means there’s more human food for the humans. Did you know you cannot buy pet food with food stamps? Without enough money and food, these are the choices our friends have to make every day.
Dignity. Why are we “open to the public”? This article nails it:“The volunteers at the food bank were silver-haired and kind. On my first visit, I was fresh from my receptionist job, sharply dressed in a skirt suit handed down from my mother. I was worried I wouldn’t look needy enough, so I’d tucked my pay stubs into my purse just in case. It wasn’t necessary. I told the volunteers I needed help and they believed me. I didn’t need to prove I was hungry. It was a time in my life when I rarely received respect from anyone, but I received it from them. Dignity was the first gift they gave me.”
Choice. Food banks can’t provide enough to feed everyone. The article quotes the executive director of a human food bank “Says Habenicht, ‘I wish the public better understood that most folks who visit the food bank are working families who simply can’t make ends meet with the rising cost of living … Not only do families have to choose between paying bills or buying food, they often have to decide who, in the family, gets to eat. These are impossible choices that no family should have to make.’”
Please read this article to learn more about why the “easy road” isn’t so easy. But we do our best to make it as good as it can be.
Read the entire article here.