As the largest Rotary Club in this area, this is great leadership you all are providing! If you haven’t taken part yet, there’s another opportunity at this week’s meeting. And the difference you’ll make in the lives of people in Marion and Polk Counties will be enormous.
So where do those donations go? Shelters, food pantries, and other agencies accessed by our low-income neighbors. The impact of these meals is impossible to let slide. Meals are provided at shelters where people may have little else, or the support helps families who may be recovering from a traumatic situation, or maybe a household that can only afford to put 10 meals a week on their table. MPFS takes our cash donations and multiplies them in extraordinary ways to feed even more people than direct food donations (although they appreciate those as well!).
Brent Nielsen, our Food Drive Chair, related an interesting perspective on this. “As a parent, we have all had the experience of leaving a little more for our kids, but when the cupboard is bare that takes on a painful poignancy.  In a country as wealthy as ours, in a community with the agricultural plentitude of ours – hunger should not be a foreign concept.”
Keep up the great work, my fellow Rotarians. We are helping to bring a valuable, basic necessity to people who need it . . . and Making a Difference.
I’ll see you at Rotary!