An elderly man at a local community center slowly eats fresh fruit and salad while reading his newspaper. A weary Mother with three small children cries in our food distribution line when she receives a whole chicken, it will provide many meals for her family. A senior at the trailer park alongside the freeway greets our Mobile Food Pantry with her guide dog. Pregnant military wives visit with one another over cartons of eggs while their toddlers munch on fresh strawberries. A homeless student taking classes at Saddleback College is first in line for each food distribution because our Mobile Food Pantry is her only source of fruit and vegetables.
Helping Hand Worldwide is committed to ending hunger by serving the most vulnerable among us, with the most basic of all needs, nutritious food. The recipients we assist may seem quite different on the surface: men and women, children and teens, seniors, the disabled, military families with young children, single Mothers, students and homeless veterans. But when you look more closely at their faces you will see the same shallow cheeks and somber eyes of people fighting food insecurity on a daily basis. Our Mobile Food Pantry, operating in 27 communities, provides a reliable and effective means for recipients to receive help with food insecurity while successfully enabling individuals and entire families the opportunity to improve their health and quality of life.
The majority of our recipients are considered very low-income and are unemployed, underemployed, retired or living on a small fixed income. They are unable to afford healthy food especially fresh produce and high protein products such as meat and eggs. Rising costs for fruits and veggies range from apples at $2.00 per lb. to green peppers as high as $5.00 lb. We are providing access to a balanced diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, fish, chicken, eggs, low-fat dairy products and whole grains. We are reaching behind the closed doors of poverty to serve 11,000 recipients per month.
