Donate to Feeding America, the non-profit GNO Gives Back is supporting Tuesday night on Twitter. Sign up to chat. Bid on some charity auctions, win a door prize. Tweet about this important event. Share it with your friend, network….

Here’s why I am taking part and helping by providing two Disney items for auction. Please check out the Tinker Bell Hat and the Buzz Lightyear Boy’s Pajamas.

I live in a county in Florida where the unemployment rate is 9.2 (as of Sept. 2008, the national average at that time was 6.1%). The school my daughter attends is a Title 1 School, which means that we have a high population of children living at or below poverty level because they qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch.

Putting food on the table is often difficult to do around here. I am a member of the school’s PTSO. One of the things we handle is requests from teachers whose students need financial help for the extras at school, field trips, school supplies, etc. We have seen these requests increase dramatically.

With Thanksgiving coming, we are providing a meal for the families of our students for the first time because the staff have heard that there are going to be many children without a real Thanksgiving dinner.

Every year the staff provides gifts for students. Teachers hand in their lists for these “Angels” and staff and some parents provide gifts for them. Things are so bad that we are going to provide Christmas trees and other holiday decorations too.

Our church which is directly across the street from the school has a food bank. We are providing food for families two days each week and have to turn people away because we run out of food. We are giving away more food this year than we have for the past three years combined.

Poverty is all around us. It may be your next door neighbor who has to choose between paying her electric bill or buying groceries for her children. It may be your son’s friend’s parents whose Dad works two jobs but still can’t pay car insurance for his wife’s car, which sits in the driveway. It may be your daughter’s teacher, who can’t buy little presents for her students because she is helping her elderly mother pay for her medicine. It may be the young mother in your church who has to have her 10 year old stay home alone after school so she can work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 2:07 am and is filed under Beliefs, Non-Profits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.