How IPC Is Feeding Families This Summer
The Impossible Math
Tanya stood in the checkout line, doing the same math she does every month. In her cart: groceries for the week and her daughter's favorite cereal. In her pocket: not quite enough for groceries and the electric bill that was already past due. The car needed a part, too, or she couldn't get to work. She put the meat back, then the cereal.
Tanya works hard. And yet, she still regularly faces the impossible decision between putting food on the table or a roof over their heads. She lives in that narrow space between getting by and going without, the same space many of our neighbors occupy long before they ever knock on our door.
A Growing Need
Tanya's math is getting harder. As of last month, nearly 50,000 Alabamians have lost their SNAP benefits as federal cuts take effect, and we are on track to lose up to 100,000 people’s benefits by year's end. Those hit hardest are the ones least able to bear it: homeless children and seniors.
Summer makes it worse. During the school year, many of our children depend on those free and reduced school lunches as their most reliable meal of the day. When the final bell rings, that meal disappears.
Meeting the Need Through Summer Learning
Our Summer Learning Program, which began last week, is seeking to fill that gap by giving children a hot breakfast and lunch every day, so that children like Tanya's daughter start their mornings fed.
Support our Summer Learning Program
Providing Food with Dignity
While her daughter is cared for, Tanya can turn to our Blessing Box, where she can choose what she needs with dignity. The Blessing Box is stocked by our Food Pantry, the only one in our immediate area that supplies both groceries and hygiene items, including toilet paper, toothpaste, and cleaning supplies that food stamps won't cover.
And where dry goods aren't enough, PEER fills the gap with fresh food. Through our partnership with East Lake United Methodist Church, we provide over 400 families a month with fresh produce, meat, and eggs at Pop-Up Markets at North Birmingham Towers, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Barrett Elementary, and Hayes K-8. For neighbors who can't get to a market, our members deliver food right to their door.
More Than a Handout
All of these ministries are part of IPC’s one intentional response to hunger, meeting our neighbors wherever they are. And what we offer is more than a handout. We offer relationship, advocacy, resources, and hope.
How You Can Help
The need has never been greater, and neither has the opportunity to meet it. All of these ministries run on the generous donations of folks like you, and currently, we are running low. Every canned good, every box of cereal, every bottle of shampoo becomes a meal, a moment of relief, a reminder to someone like Tanya that she is not alone.
Here's how you can help. Look for the blue cards in the pews that share our most current food needs. You can also email Catherine Sager to get on the email list and stay in the loop.
Hunger doesn't take a vacation this summer. But neither will we.
