Harvesters Community Food Network

In support of the poverty focus of Blog Action Day I decided to write a brief post on Harvesters - our local food pantry network. Here is a paragraph from their site:

Hunger Knows No Boundaries

When people think of hunger, many imagine a homeless man in line at a soup kitchen. However, the majority of the people Harvesters serves are families, and nearly half of the households receiving assistance have someone who is employed.

Rising food and energy prices make it difficult for working families. Maureen, a mother of three, is employed but has difficulty paying the bills.

“I sometimes come up short at the end of the month,” she said. “Thank you for all your help.”

Because of the community’s support, people in Kansas City have somewhere to turn in their time of need.

Our church became involved with the Harvester food network about 3 years ago and it has been a blessing to many families in and out of our church. Initially our church made a request to become a Harvester Food Pantry and they came out and inspected the space that we would be using for it because it had to meet certain guidelines to become an official pantry. We called it Hope Rocks Food Pantry.

Once we were approved we could go online and order food from their warehouse at extremely low prices. A day or so after we order (usually monthly) a team from our church goes over to the warehouse and picks up large quantities of food.. often on pallets.. and loads them into a van or two. Once we started advertising the food pantry we have had many folks call and come in for bags and boxes of food. Over the years we have blessed many families.

To fund and support the pantry each month we take an offering we call "the dollar offering". Ushers and others stand at the exit doors to our worship center with coffee cans and ask people to give loose bills and change. The church has also budgeted a monthly amount to supplement this amount and we take an offering around the holidays as well.

On several occasions I was involved with giving food from the pantry and I was so very blessed to be able to not only pray for people in need but be able to help them with some food as well. People always seem to be so thankful.

I encourage you to google "food pantry" in your neighborhood and possibly donate or help out in some way to the needs of the poor in your city.