St. Juan Diego Conference, St. Vincent de Paul Portland Council

The significant increase in the number of clients served by our food pantry has leveled off over the past several months.  In March and April we served an average of 11 families per service day.  For April we served a total of 148 families including 353 adults and 260 children, providing them with a total of 10,900 lbs of food.  We also now serve 41 hungry kids with weekend meals through McKinley and Springville Elementary Schools.  We continue to help clients in our local area with limited rent and utility assistance.  Several of these clients have significant medical problems including fighting cancer and other deadly or debilitating diseases.

Thank you all so much for your continuing financial support, which is crucial to our continuing mission!

Over the final quarter of 2012 SJD St Vincent de Paul remained very active in assisting those in need within our local area.  We had an increase throughout the period in the number of families helped per service day culminating in an average of 13 families per day in December.  We also continue to help local children with weekend meals through our backpack program at McKinley (30 kids) and Springville (13 kids) Elementary Schools.  In November and December we were the recipient of numerous food drive donations including the following: Girl Scouts 3360 lbs, Boy Scouts 4392 lbs, Godfathers Pizza 1339 lbs, Sunset High School 1530 lbs and Portland Community College 304 lbs.  The noted food drives along with generous donations from people like you, have enabled us to fill our shelves and continue to help these families and kids in need.

In December we were excited to help an additional 30 families through our first independent Christmas Food Box program.  This program allowed us to target those families most in need and provide them with boxes of food for a Christmas meal, a gift card from a local grocery store for a meat purchase and additional gift cards for the purchase of Christmas gifts for family members.  Thanks so much to all of you for your continuing support of our mission by your donations through Global Giving!

Q3 saw an increase in need from our clients. Our client average jumped from 12 to 16 families served each day that we were open in September for a total of 250 families for the month. We also saw a similar spike in request for rent and utility assistance as funds throughout the county dry up (one of our neighboring pantries was shut down during September.  All in all it was great to service the need of our neighbors.

In September we restarted our "Backpack Program" that provides nutritious food to elementary school kids that typically come to school hungry Monday morning. These children are identified at two local schools by secretaries and counsellors. This year we will provide food for about 40 children. Feedback from the schools has been terrific about the effectiveness of this program in combatting hunger and building self esteem.

In the midst of rising need, we have seen shortages of food available from the Oregon Food bank and rising prices. We have also been impacted by recalls of peanut butter and ground beef.

We thank you each  for your generosity during these challenging times.