“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up not doing anything for anybody.”
—Malcolm Bane
Hunger in America is a serious problem. According to the USDA, food instability affects nearly 1 in 6 people, including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children.
VAPE has decided to do something about hunger in our community. We have partnered with The Road Home, a local shelter that provides services to the homeless in Utah. Each month for the next year, we will provide 180 lunches to the Midvale daycare location, enough to feed each child lunch for two days.
Our CEO, Daryle Stafford, said, “I first became aware of The Road Home a few months ago when my wife and her friends had an opportunity to volunteer with them making sack lunches for children. This charity provides low barrier shelters for homeless families. Many of those living in these shelters struggle with serious addictions or mental illness, so their children are in need of special attention.”
“To meet this need, The Road Home provides preschool and helps with some of the older children. However, they are unable to provide lunch for these kids without donations from the community. For some of these children, this might be the only meal they get for that day.”
“Since learning about this charity, I have been grappling with the reality that there are children in our own community who are going without food. Initially, my thoughts were, “with so many resources and opportunities surrounding us, how does this happen? Why isn’t anyone doing something to protect these children? What can I do to help?”
“I think this is where we sometimes get stuck in our desire to help those who may be in need. Realizing that you won’t be able to fix the situation sometimes prevents us from doing anything at all. However, I realized that like the Malcolm Bane quote above says, even if we aren’t able to create a solution that solves the problem, we can at least do one small deed to help support these children in our community.”
As our one small deed, VAPE employees are banding together once a month for the next year to pack these lunches and then to deliver them to The Road Home. We’d like to thank each person for their help, as well as take this opportunity to thank each of our clients for your business. Your continued support helps us attack the problem of hunger in our community and to make a difference in the lives of these children.
Sources
Coleman-Jensen, A., Rabbitt, M. P., Gregory, C., & Singh, A. (2016). Household Food Security in the United States in 2015. USDA ERS