Serve the people that need it.
To be honest, yes, they did have
that concern.
But I will tell you that our
community has been amazing.
They have heard our pleas.
They've heard other food pantries.
Please bring us money.
Please give us money, please give
food.
We need help.
We need volunteers.
And the community has responded.
When you understood
clearly that
the SNAP funding was
not going to be in effect starting
in November, what went
through your head?
We have a little bit of time to
prepare for that is what I truly
thought.
We'll look forward to it this week
being very busy.
Well, in fact, it started last week.
People were planning, people heard
the news, people.
Apprehensive about what was really
going to happen.
Is it is it going to happen and we
need to plan for how do we feed our
families so so
for me it was a
maybe we've got a little bit of
extra time but but we really didn't
so again thanks to an amazing staff
and the volunteers that that
followed along with us I said,
we're here.
Even if by
court order the SNAP funding
is reinstated,
do you expect it to be immediate
where people will have that on their
EBT cards?
I don't expect that to be immediate.
I expect that's to be weeks.
And also I think people are still
going to be apprehensive about
is it really true.
Plus I think that people have found
us and now have also found that
we're welcoming, that we are here
for them.
And so I believe we'll continue
to see uptick in numbers here.
And plus we're coming into the
holidays, which is always a busy
time for us.
How confusing and frightening
is it for your
customers, your clients, the people
you serve, to kind
of be in the midst of what's
happening in Washington?
It's very confusing.
I was talking to some of the clients
last week.
They said, like, we're scrambling,
but we don't know what
to listen to, which side to listen.
And we're in the middle.
And who is also in
the middle are children.
And that's heartbreaking that
children are going hungry
and maybe going hungry because of
the SNAP benefits being cut.
What kind of
provisions do you have
here to help the
community? I mean, I see
all of this food and produce,
and over there I see people making
soup.
So tell me a little bit about what
you do.
Yep, so the river has eight
different programs and it's really a
way to give different access to
different people and how can they
get food.
So we do have a mobile
meal program where we go out into 24
different neighborhoods throughout
the week where we're delivering a
meal. We also have our most
busiest and popular program
which is curbside and that's
really what the volunteers here are
preparing to put together bags for
our clients that are coming
curbsides.
With a variety of things.
What we're seeing here is produce,
the most requested item,
fresh produce.
You've heard over and over again
from our clients that processed food
isn't good for their diet, but it's
also, having access to
fresh produce isn't easy.
It's expensive in the grocery store.
So having that for our clients at
a food pantry is maybe a little bit
different than what most people
might consider a food-pantry
distributing, but milk and
eggs and dairy products.