Good morning friends of Care and Share!

As we move into the holiday season and get closer to the end of the year, we are reminded of the progress that’s been made to help individuals struggling with hunger here in Southern Colorado. During the past year, Care and Share provided access to food to 122,000 of our neighbors in need, connecting 14,000 more families in need to healthy food than the previous year.

However, this work is not complete. The reality is that there are still many individuals and families in our community who may struggle to put food on the table, making it almost impossible for them to realize financial stability.
                                                                                                                                 
Ron and his wife inherited three grandchildren to take care of—three grandchildren with “hollow legs.” For a week, Ron wondered what he was going to do. Living on a limited budget, it was a struggle to feed his multi-generational family, which also included Ron’s two parents. Then he made a plan. He built a garden and learned how to freeze and can fruit and vegetables. He and his wife would stay up until midnight during harvest season preserving their precious food for the growing children. He also began coming to a local food pantry every other week to receive bread, potatoes, canned soup and other pantry staples, which allowed him to stretch his grocery budget for the family of seven living under his roof.

Ron and his 17 year old grandson are going to rebuild a car together. Ron wants to find out what his grandson wants to do in life, give him some values, and build his confidence. Ron knows that “life is about people…helping people is what it amounts to. Caring and sharing, fill a little bit of a gap, make people feel like today is not going to be quite that much of a struggle.”

Ron is not alone. In fact, 171,000 people in Southern Colorado are at risk of hunger.

There are simple things we can do to support families like Ron’s. This includes donating your time and talents. Care and Share relies on volunteers to help deliver on our mission to provide food to those in need – and it’s a great opportunity for family and friends to rally around this cause.

If you can’t volunteer, one option is to donate to the Give A Meal program, a Feeding America program supported by Bank of America that extends the impact of individual donations. For every $1 donated, until the end of the year, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation will donate $2 to support Feeding America and its network of food banks.

To donate to Give A Meal, visit http://www.bankofamerica.com/give. Even if you can’t donate, posting the Give A Meal link via Twitter or Facebook helps raise awareness about the 171,000 individuals struggling with hunger in Southern Colorado.

Let’s make sure that our neighbors don’t have to make painful choices between food and other basic necessities. Using all of our connections, we can fight hunger, help our friends and neighbors, and build a stronger community.

Thanks for reading!