VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Jay Height:
Hi, I’m Jay Height here at Shepherd Community, and we’re excited. It’s June. We’ve been able to do two vaccine clinics, and I’ve got my shots, that’s why I’m not wearing a mask. And here in a few weeks, we’ll be doing a third vaccine clinic with our partners at IU Health.

Jay Height:
We’re continuing to help our families with the COVID crisis, but another way that we’re continuing to invest in their lives is to help them with the very basic need of food.

Fannie:
Hello is this John? Hey, John, this is Fannie from Shepherd Community, I’m here to drop your food boxes in front of your house.

Jay Height:
We’re delivering to over 160 homes every week, in addition to families coming here to get food.

Fannie:
How are you doing?

Jay Height:
We’re excited to be able to…

Jay Height:
… do that in a great partnership with Gleaners.

John Elliott:
When the pandemic hit, Gleaners lost two out of four distribution channels so we quickly had to replace and come up with alternative distribution channels, and frankly, deal with a volume that was doubling at least in need. Because you already knew your neighborhood, because you already had a history of a variety of feeding programs, Shepherd didn’t miss a beat, just absorbed another way of doing it and another program.

Jay Height:
That is in addition to the meals we served the children here and at Minnie Hartmann, our childcare center, and the food that we send home for the weekends. We’re trying to make sure that food insecurity is not a challenge for our families.

Jay Height:
And so what does it mean? We’ve added on and added an additional cooler and freezer so we can have more fresh produce and frozen meats to help our families not just have food, but have healthy food.

Jason Courtney:
We had donors come in and provide a refrigerator and a freezer for us to handle more food and give us more capacity to serve our neighborhood. So now we were able to have fresh fruit, eggs. We have a dairy box and we received these every Monday and they go out every week, Monday through Saturday, we deliver food to our neighborhood.

Jason Courtney:
So this refrigerator allows us to maximize our capacity and maximize our touch to the neighborhood where we can actually supply more of the food that you see.

Jay Height:
We’re thankful for the great job that Gleaners is doing in that regard. Also, our partnership with Second Helpings, who helps provide meals to our families.

Jay Height:
Well, the way forward is for us to continue to meet this need. But if in two years from now those same families still need food, we haven’t done our job. We’re you using food to open the door so that we can bring all of the services of Shepherd Community to help stabilize those families and move them to a life of upward stability.

Jay Height:
We need your help. If you would like to come and deliver… you can deliver to about 10 homes in two hours. If you’re interested, Donna Alexander would love to hear from you on how you could give some hours on a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, or a Saturday.

Jay Height:
My wife Jane and I have delivered for the last year on Wednesday mornings and we look forward to that time to see our friends, catch up with them, encourage them, pray with them, and to share food, to making sure that hunger is no longer a reality in our neighborhood. Can you help? We’re on the road to recovery.