Now that we’ve decided to stick with the wheat-free changes to our diet at home – after the 6-month experiment proved that we do feel varying degrees of better – I have started going through my cupboards and pulling out glutinous items I won’t be using again so that I can drop them off at the food pantry at my office. A couple of boxes of pasta today. Some Krusteaz cake and cornbread mixes last week.

I love it that we have a food pantry here at JFCS, the non-profit where I work. We have stocked food pantries in all five of our regional offices, open to our case-managed clients and others needing assistance without cost, including isolated seniors and families with children. The food pantries are just one of forty social service programs we run to help people of all ages and stages of life – regardless of religious affiliation, in case you were wondering. 😉

So I’m not being coy here, this is a fundraising plug, and/or an invitation to help spread the word: my org, JFCS, just launched on June 1 an Indiegogo Campaign (that’s crowdfunding, folks) to raise money for our Food Pantries. The goal is to raise $25,000 by June 30. By working together to meet this goal we can:

• increase stock of fresh and non-perishable foods on JFCS Food Pantry shelves to meet growing demand.
• provide food vouchers to cover cost of supplies not included in the pantry to people with urgent need due to job loss or severe illness.
• deliver groceries to more homebound people every week.
• ensure more working families won’t come up short for grocery money at the end of the month.

Will you please take a moment to look at the campaign’s video on the Indiegogo site and consider supporting? I wouldn’t be plugging this cause on my personal page if it weren’t such a match-up of subject – hey, this is a food blog! Back when I set up meliovore a few years ago, I stated that eliminating food waste was one of my goals, and food pantries are a great model for sharing the equivalent of the corners of our fields with people who need help getting enough to eat. Plus, doesn’t hunger in plain sight around us seem a terrible waste in this land of plenty? I could go on about the way volunteers in our community have mobilized, creating a peer-to-peer donation network to make sure staple items are always available at the regional pantries but in an effort to keep it short here, I’ll urge you to click over to the video to learn more: https://igg.me/at/jfcs-food-pantry

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