According to Mercury News, in March 2020, more than 2.8 million Californians lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and 6 million kids are suddenly going school online. The Covid-19 pandemic creates hardships for all Californians. Low-income families and homeless suffer the most because among this group, the job loss rate is the highest, and emergency savings are essentially zero. In addition, many of the food pantries in the bay area are closed due to the Shelter-in-place order, which slows down the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
At the Campbell Care Ministry, we work closely with the CityTeam ministry to do our part to help feed struggling families in our community. Instead of closing our food pantry services, we ramped them up with a streamlined food distribution process and safety precautions. With the safety guidelines provided by CityTeam, all Campbell Care volunteers wear personal protective equipment including gowns, face shields, masks and gloves. All groceries are prepacked and ready to be loaded into vehicles. All people remain at least 6” apart, and volunteers will not touch any part of the vehicles of our guests. Our guests will stay in their vehicles during the entire food pickup process except when they need to open and close the trunks or doors of their vehicles for the volunteers to put the prepacked groceries into their vehicles.
Since the beginning of 2020, the number of people visiting the Campbell Care food pantry have increased from 30 families in January to over 100 in early April. The Campbell Care food pantry also increased its opening times from once a month to twice a month on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month. As the pandemic continues, needs will also increase. We at the Campbell Care Ministry are ready to serve and are thankful to have the opportunity to do our part to help.
These numbers of hardships are horrible! I feel very blessed that other than minor annoyances, I am not negatively affected by this virus and this makes me want to really help this Care Ministry's wonderful services. I have personally seen many struggling families visit the food pantry and I am thrilled when I see their smiling faces. My contribution is minute but God is bringing to surface the need to help this ministry. At this time of Covid - 19, my prayers for the safety of the younger, healthier staff is the most important contribution that I can make and when this 'shelter in place' order is lifted a little bit I will be joining the team as we hel…
When I was a girl I watched television with my mother. We saw a commercial in which a charity was asking for money to feed underprivileged children. I was appalled at scenes of poverty and pictures of children with swollen bellies from hunger. I asked my mother how people could tolerate this in the world. My mother explained that people just became insensitive to the world's problems with time. I then vowed that I would never become that calloused. Now, as an adult I work with the Care Ministry food pantry to help honor the promise I made as a child. I am forever ripped inside because of the disparity between the wealthy and the very poor. I t…