When We Are Full of Gratitude
About a month ago, families who were on the edge of being able to feed their families and pay their bills were forced into making impossible decisions. Do we feed our children or do we pay rent? Do I skip meals throughout the day so that I can pay my power bill? Or, a real-life example of a local family we heard, how can I make $5 in food money last for a week? Throughout this time we heard stories from school districts about teenagers skipping school to work jobs so that their siblings could eat. Or parents skipping meals so that they could pay rent. But the community did not just stand back and watch. Everyone stepped up to support local food pantries in a way I have not seen in the last 11 years of working with Food for Hope.
As soon as we realized we could play a role in getting our neighbors through this difficult time, Food for Hope took action. At first we felt overwhelmed. How would we distribute more food when we only had just enough to run our current programs? Things were moving quickly. In partnership with our school district partners, plans had to be made at lightning speed, and there was no time to raise the necessary funds. We put out our plea to the community for funding and volunteer staffing so that we could execute what we were hoping to do. What happened next still blows me away. I have never experienced the outpouring of community support for Food for Hope that we have in the past month. Here are just a few examples:
We received a record number of food donations in the last few weeks. We haven’t been able to process and calculate it all yet (mostly because it just keeps coming!), but we are talking THOUSANDS of pounds of food.
A valuable partnership with Adams 12 Five Star Schools and the Five Star Foundation allowed us to fund and execute a plan to distribute close to 5,000 supplemental food bags, give out hundreds of grocery gift cards, and stock up our food pantries with extra food.
Kyle Clark at 9News Denver generously featured us in his Word of Thanks program - raising just over $70,000 for our holiday and emergency relief work!
We also had some financial gifts from new and existing supporters that encouraged us to continue our work, and allowed us to amp up our services to meet the increased need during this time.
Why am I sharing these details? Mostly just to say thank you. Thank you for allowing us to get better at what we do and serve communities more effectively. Thank you for holding us up over this last, difficult month. We believe children deserve to be fed and to live in a place of certainty regarding when they will receive their next meal. So thank you for helping us make that possible and give hope to those in difficult situations… for the holiday season and beyond.
