Making sure a person has enough to eat can be life-changing in more ways than alleviating hunger. That was the message at the Harvest Regional Food Bank Hunger Action Month Luncheon Tuesday at Williams Memorial Methodist Church.
"I want to thank all of you for attending the Hunger Action Month kick-off," said Andi Darby, Harvest board member. "More than 42 million people struggle with food insecurity across the U.S. and 13 million of those are children while 5.7 million of them are seniors. While hunger doesn't have a season, September is the time we call attention to it."
Mandy Mills spoke at the luncheon about the difficulties she went through in her earlier life to show how organizations that feed the hungry can affect the lives of people in need of a helping hand.
Mills said she was a victim of sex and drug trafficking as a child and it affected her early adult life. There was a time she was hungry and alone.
"I had no family because I'd pushed everyone away," Mills said. "At my darkest hour in 2007 I was sleeping on the floor of a 24-hour laundrymat. I was strung out on cocaine, homeless and alone."
Her life began to change once she got to Texarkana got involved in church. She was comforted by God's love and the love and compassion of people in the community who saw what her life could be like even when she couldn't.
"With the encouragement of the community I was able to pull myself up again. God brought me to Texarkana to save my life. God allows us to go through our storms so we can help each other. It gives us the tools we need to help each. I want to say thank you," Mills said.
Harvest Regional Food Bank has several programs aimed at alleviating hunger in its 10-county service area including the Backpack Program, it's mobile pantry program, summer feeding program and providing low-cost food to its partner agencies which serve the community.
"In the past year we had 26 mobile pantries in underserved, rural areas that don't have as many pantries and we were able to get food out to those communities," said Camille Wrinkle, Harvest executive director. "In the past year we fed nearly a thousand children food through the Backpack program which gives them enough food to get them through from Friday afternoon until Monday morning."
Without community support, the work Harvest Regional Food Bank is doing would be impossible.
"We couldn't do all this alone. We rely on our community. We have volunteers of all ages. One of our most important partnerships are our agencies," Wrinkle said. "These are the people on the front line of what we do. Because of all your work we had a record year last year and. We provided 3.2 million meals and we are planning on going over the 3 million meals mark again this year. It takes all of our supporters, partners and staff. Most importantly, lives were changed and people were fed."
The community can get involved in Hunger Action Month by participating in activities featured in the 30 Ways in 30 Days Action Calendar. The calendar has suggestions each day like saving change and donating it to the food bank, taking a brown bag lunch and donating the money saved to the food bank or cleaning out the pantry and donating those items.
For more information about activities call 870-774-1398 or visit harvestregionalfoodbank.org.