Have you
ever been to a food bank? I have just this past week actually, I’m going to
share what that process is like for us. First you walk in, already feeling bad
because you have to go there in the first place, you sign in and they hand you
a stack of papers to fill out. On these papers they want you to tell them about
every penny you have received in the past two months where it came from and how
you spent it, hope you keep track of it otherwise trying to remember can be
challenging. Then you have to tell them about everyone who lives in your home
their name, birthday, gender, marital status, hair color, blood type etc… Next
you have to provide ID, Birth certificates, social security cards, proof of
income, proof of residence, and hair sample for everyone in your home and if
you don’t have even one thing then it’s “I’m sorry but we can’t help you” ( ok
maybe you don’t have to have all of that but most of it you do and you get the
idea of what it can feel like) Once you have given them all this information
then you are told to have a seat in the waiting room and someone will call you.
This wait can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours but eventually they will
call you. When they do you are taken into another room where you are interviewed
this is where they ask for your life story and that of your entire family and
want you to explain exactly what went wrong that you ended up there oh and don’t
forget you have to now verbally explain every penny you’ve ever gotten for the
past 2 months and hope you remember what you wrote because it better match up.
If you pass this interview then you are told to return to the previous waiting
room and someone will call you if you fail then its “sorry we can’t help you at
this time”. This second wait takes from 30 minutes to an hour before someone
calls you to tell you your food is ready. You load it in your car and head
home. Alright you’re set they gave you enough food to last awhile no worries
right? Wrong, once you get home it’s time to go through what you got. The first
thing you do is check the expiration dates and approximately half of everything
you just got 10 minutes ago is already expired. Straight in the trash with that
no one should have to feed their children expired food. It’s ok you still have
enough to last a week or too that helps, but wait half of what is left will
expire within the next 48 hours so much for making it last. Ok so now you look
at the food with a fast approaching deadline on it and see if you can come up
with a meal. Good luck you realize you have a lot of partial meals you know hot
dogs no bread, peanut butter no jelly, hamburger helper no hamburger, etc… Time
to get creative you end up putting a mish mash of food together making something
you think is edible and hope tasted somewhat ok. At this point I hope you don’t
have a situation like I do where I have 2 people in my family that have to be
on special diets due to allergies and disorders and one who has food aversion.
I hope this has helped you understand why telling someone to just going to a
food bank isn’t always welcome sometimes it truly isn’t a good option. We can
help improve this all we really need to do is pay attention to what we donate.
If it is expired or will expire soon don’t donate it and if you can give all
parts of a meal not just some this will help the charities if they have better
things to work with they can be much more helpful to families in need.
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