By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Volunteers for the Greater United Way of St. Joseph are busy putting meals together for needy families which might find themselves without food stamps next week.
The federal government shutdown threatens the SNAP food assistance program. Assistance might end, beginning Saturday.
Greater St. Joseph United Way President, Kylee Strough, says volunteers are compiling 300 meal kits today to be distributed by member agencies to those in need.
“We really went into this last week thinking best case scenario this all resolves and agencies have more food than they need right now, but it’s not going to go bad. And there’s always food insecurity in our community,” Strough tells KFEQmmunity. “Worst case scenario, this continues longer than we expected, we’ll do two sessions this week and pack a total of 600 kits and we’ll continue to consider adding more sessions in the coming weeks to help meet the need.”
Strough says the United Way had scheduled a Caring Connection volunteer session for mid-November and with no end in sight for the federal government shutdown, decided to add two more this week. Volunteers are meeting at the downtown Greater St. Joseph United Way offices this afternoon and will meet again Friday morning to pack more meals.
Strough says the response from volunteers has been overwhelming. Forty people volunteered to pack 300 shelf-ready meals today. Forty more volunteered to assemble the meal kits on Friday morning. The United Way reports a waiting list of 40 people willing to help.
Strough says the idea to assemble the food kits originated during the regular United Way board meeting last week. With no end to the federal government shutdown in sight, board members began to discuss what could be done if residents’ SNAP program benefits became seriously threatened.
“It’s hard to give them a gift card for food, things like that,” Strough says. “But we do have a great volunteer base who can take a lot of products that don’t go together, put them in a foil pan, wrap them up, put a recipe card in it, smack a label on it. And then we have a lot of agencies that we work with that can take those and get them into people’s hands.”
Strough says the United Way will do what it can even though the agency understands it cannot make up for a loss of food stamps.
“We recognize it is no replacement for the SNAP benefits,” Strough says. “It’s a small drip in the bucket. But at some point, all those drips start to overflow.”
At present, it appears Republicans and Democrats remain at loggerheads with no solution to the federal government shutdown, now in its fourth week, near.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ
