Jessie+D

here is an email for a man at the free store food bank

Brian MacConnell, Vice President of Communications and Strategic Planning bmacconnell@freestorefoodbank.org

http://fsfbmedia.org/beta/

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i contacted brian macconnell and i ask these following questions

How exactly does the free store food bank work? aproximatally how many costomers do you get in a day ? do you get the same people to come every day? about how much food does each person get in a meal? where do you get your funding from?

and i had an email from him awnswering this: Hi Jessie- Thanks for reaching out to us! Starvation, which means someone has so little food that they are in extreme danger of dying, is not really an issue in our community. However, many people can’t afford to buy enough food to thrive and they need help occasionally to get food for themselves and their families. At the Freestore Foodbank, we operate a food pantry. This means that people who come to see us receive food assistance in the form of food that is not yet prepared. So we don’t have a kitchen that prepares meals for people, but we provide them the food to make meals. Also, we work with kitchens out in other parts of the community to provide them the food they need to make meals for homeless people or other people in need. Each day, we see between 250-350 people a day who are in need of food. Each person can come to us for food once every 30 days, and can take 25lbs of food per person in their family. We also work with 350 other agencies throughout Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky to provide them the food they need to give out to people in their community, or to make meals for people. When people come to see us, we give them food for each member of their family, but we also talk to them about what is going on in their lives and why they are in need of help. Did they lose their job? Is someone in the family sick and they have medical bills piling up? Are they caring for many children/grand children/step children, etc? Based on what they say we give them food but also provide help to address their needs. So if someone needs a job, we can provide them certain kinds of job training, or refer them to a job placement agency. If someone is struggling with medical bills, we can find out if they are eligible for government assistance and then help them sign up for this assistance so they can continue to take their medicines or go to the doctor. If they are about to be evicted from their home because they are behind on their rent or mortgage payments, we can help them with a program that pays for these things while making sure they have a job and teaching them about how to budget their money so that they will be stable into the future.

i also contacted a woman that works there named Sarah Cook and this year so far they have gotten over 18,000 people come to the free store food bank and last year in 2010 they had got over 158,000 people to come and be fed!!!

[] here is a link to my project the username is (jessiedavin) the password is (password)