Lowcountry Food Bank looking for more help

One in four children in the Lowcountry go to bed hungry. The Lowcountry Food Bank is just one organization reaching out to the hungry during this Holiday season–and year-round. Jermaine Husser is the executive director of the food bank and says last year they served 190,000 people, but this year he says it seems like either help is harder to find, or more people need assistance.

The economy has just not turned around as people had hoped, as fast as possible. People who were out of work last year at this same time period thought that they would have found work, and they wouldn’t need assistance, but unfortunately, it’s taking people a year and a half to two years to find a job that would pay them enough that they would need to make in order to support their family.

The Lowcountry Food Bank’s mission is to provide food to needy families during these tough economic times. Husser says they get the food from donators, bring it back to the Charleston facility, clean the food, and prepare it for distribution.

As for the area’s poverty, Husser says he may know a solution:

Education and jobs is so vital to our state because people want to work, people want to be self-sustainable, people do not want to come to our doors and ask for food.

Husser says sometimes there is a stereotype that “needy” people are lazy. However, the stories Husser has heard seem to preclude that stereotype.

Moms and dads, grandparents who have worked and have living-waged jobs and all of a sudden they go into their workplace on Monday morning and get handed a pink slip or get told that their job is no longer needed. And, they come through our doors really expressing pain and agony about having to utilize our services. But, at this time, right now, that is the only way they can take care of their family and provide food assistance.

The Lowcountry Food Bank is a private, non-profit human service organization funded by a variety of government grants, shared maintenance fees and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individual donations.