Over the summer, Rotary partnered with Thea's Table, a local non-profit that provides food for families struggling with homelessness. We put together 30 emergency food bags, each of which provided 6 shelf stable meals (two days' worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner) to a local family of four. 120 tummies full and 720 meals! Since June, the need for these bags has tripled. With COVID still in full force and evictions continuing to rise, there is now a waitlist of families who are looking for help as they struggle with food scarcity.
As I sit here slurping my fresh coffee and wiping the egg and toast crumbs from my sweater, I know that I'm in a great position to help. If we all step up, we can provide a weekend's worth of food to another 30 families. The biggest task involved is gathering/purchasing all of the food because some are best purchased at Costco, Hy-Vee, Amazon.com, etc, depending on price and items available. I can share the food lists and previous receipts for whoever is interested in helping so that you are able to see where I purchased what and get a sense of the cost. If each member wants to commit to providing one of the items needed in each of the food bags, I could pick up the items from your house or you could drop them off at my house, and then I would assemble the bags. The breakdown works out to be about $35-$40 per bag, but some of the individual items are a lot more costly than others.
Let me know your thoughts! I look forward to working with everyone, in a COVID-safe fashion, to make this happen again!