Don't Forget the Clark County Area Food Pantry and Resource Center with your Holiday Donations, Part 2
Friday, December 11th, 2015 -- 11:22 AM
-With the holiday season upon us, donations to the Clark County Area Food Pantry and Resource Center are very important.I spoke with Judy Morrow and Deanna Heiman, who were instrumental in getting the Food Pantry going, about the importance of donating and the challenges of running a facility like this. First, they continued their explanation of how the Food Pantry came to be.
Deanna: "The more we talked about what should our name be, what should our mission be? We decided that a food pantry is not meant to be a long term solution. And we wanted to partner with other organizations throughout the area to assist people in becoming independent and self sustaining. We didn't want people to be dependent on that food pantry forever."
"One of the first things we did was we combined forces with the Emergency Food Pantry, which Jody Conner had run successfully out of the Job Center Office for a number of years. So, we partnered with them, we actually combined, so that we're all one now and it's just the Clark County Area Food Pantry and Resource Center. And then we branched out to the county organizations and reached out to them and other community organizations."
"One of the things we're working on right now with Workforce Resource, is they have a program that will actually provide free training if you meet their criteria. You have to be within a certain age range and be unemployed, obviously, and they have other criteria that you need to meet. But we help identify those people who are looking for employment and direct them to Workforce Resource so that they can get lined up with training and then Workforce Resource can also assist them in getting employment. So those are the kind of partnerships that are very important to us that we continue to build throughout the community and the county."
Coming up on Monday, we'll hear how many people the pantry serves every month and the challenges of running a facility like the pantry.
For More:
Part 1: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=15590
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.