Second in a series…
More than 300 low-income families are getting fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products on a regular basis thanks to a $2,500 Sweet Home Community Foundation grant to Sweet Home Emergency Ministries. This article is one of a series highlighting 2003 Sweet Home Community Foundation grant recipients.
According to Director Rebecca McClaskey, the Community Foundation grant has helped improve the quality of food distributed to poor and hungry people in Sweet Home. “SHEM had no way to store the volume of produce and dairy products needed to adequately serve our clients. With the Community Foundation grant we bought two large commercial refrigerators to store perishables.î”
“We can now respond to offers from the Oregon Food Bank positively because we now have a place to store items that before we’d turn away. Since we can extend the shelf life of items we are now able to distribute fairly to all clients throughout the week, not just the first couple of days after we receive a shipment from the Oregon Food Bank,” she explained.
Director McClaskey sees other benefits as well. “We are now able to order in more nutritious foods that may be too costly for poor people to purchase. Fresh fruit is relatively expensive, and with refrigerated storage we are able to offer fresh fruit in all the food boxes. Right now we have pears and apples for clients. Fresh fruit is so important for children to meet their nutritional needs.”
The commercial refrigerators have resulted in other benefits for SHEM. “We are almost entirely run by volunteers,” said McClaskey. “When food shipments come in we can quickly unload them into the refrigerators instead of having to break down the boxes. That’s important when you only have three or four persons to unload a truck.”
The Community Foundation grant process was also important to Director McClaskey. “Much of SHEM’s funding has come from federal grants. With declining funding they are becoming harder to get, and are narrowly focused. With the Community Foundation grant we were able to get exactly what we needed without all the red tape.”
Grants such as the one received by SHEM will again be available this winter. 2004 Community Foundation grant applications will be available December 1, 2003 through January 16, 2004 at the Chamber of Commerce.
For more information on the Sweet Home Community Foundation, or if youíd like to donate to the current campaign “Give Where You Live”, call 367-9206.