Who are Butler County people in need of food bank?

Editor’s note: The Journal-News and Shared Harvest Foodbank join together every year to ask for your help to end hunger in Southwest Ohio through your support of the Community Food Relief campaign. This guest column from Tina Osso, executive director of Shared Harvest Foodbank, shares some of the ways how your generosity can help strengthen and nourish families in the region.

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Often I am asked who the people are that need help with groceries? What did they do that caused them to not have enough to even feed their families? Why can’t they just get a job?

I am here to tell you that you encounter the people who stand in our food pantry lines on a daily basis: They bus your table at your favorite restaurant or hand you your food through the drive-through window. They stock the shelves at the big box stores or slice your deli meat at your local grocery. They care for your elderly parents in assisted living or nursing homes, as well as take care of your children in day care centers. They clean your hotel room, or take your money at the gas station. They are working, and working hard, just to be poor.

They are also those folks we cross the street not to encounter. They may have mental health issues or drug problems, they look disheveled, may even carry an odor, sleep on the streets unless the weather is so bad they can’t. They panhandle, try to clean our windshields at traffic lights, carry cardboard signs on street corners.

These folks are not easy to care for. They are the discarded; they should not also be hungry.

They are our neighbors and friends who, at middle age, got caught in the worst recession of our generation and lost nearly everything. They are still trying to pick up the pieces and stabilize their lives, but look to our network to help them in that quest.

Many used to be supporters, dropping food donations in collection barrels, writing checks to support hunger relief, never imagining they would be standing in a line asking for food. Yet here they are.

Your contribution helps us provide food through our network to those who don’t have the means to provide for themselves. Many of these folks are doing the best they can, given the circumstances of their lives right now.

With your help, we offer them basic sustenance and the feeling of being connected to other human beings who care what happens to them.

We could not do what we do without you.

Every $1 you give provides seven meals to someone in need, right here at home.

Hunger is not a choice, giving is.

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HOW TO DONATE

Giving is easy and your donations are tax deductible: