Food Pantry Suffering Shortages

On Sunday, November 15th, the Desoto edition of the Commercial Appeal ran a front page news story about the difficulty the Walls Catholic Social Services food pantry has been having keeping up with the massive increase of clients coming in for food.

“Since that story ran, my phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting to make donations!” exclaims Sr. Ruthann Williams, SHSM Director of Programs. “I e-mailed the reporter and thanked him for running a story on us. We really need donations.”

“The Walls mayor’s office called to tell me that they have taken up a food collection for us. And a lady called from a Baptist church. She said, ‘We knew about you but we didn’t know that you needed food.’ The response from the community has been wonderful!” adds Sr. Ruthann.

Since September, the Walls Catholic Social Services Food Pantry has twice had to close early because food supplies ran out a few days before delivery of the next month’s allotment from government sources.

“We serve Walls, Lake Cormorant, and parts of Horn Lake,” says Sr. Janice Richards, “It’s a large territory and we’re the only food pantry the people in those areas can go to. If we go under, the people in this area have nowhere to go for food.”

“That article really helped us. We are so grateful that they ran it. We really need donations. Once we had food again in early November, in the first two weeks 110 households came in for food. Some of these households have six or more people in them. The same month a year ago, 121 households came in for the entire month, so you can see we’ve had a huge increase. The numbers coming in for assistance aren’t going to decrease anytime soon as the economy is not going to improve overnight,” Sr. Janice explained.

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