Feeding the Most Vulnerable

Your generosity means area children won’t go hungry.

It’s shocking to read statistics like—474,000 children and youth in Arizona don’t know where their next meal will come from. That’s enough boys and girls to fill up the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium seven times! This is frightening and heartbreaking—especially when you personally know the names of some of those children, like five-year-old Josue.

When Josue’s mother, Adriana, lost her warehouse job, Josue and his three brothers felt the impact right away. Thankfully, a friend told her about St. Mary’s Food Bank.

“This is a really big help for us,” Adriana says as she sits Josue down for a hearty breakfast while they wait to pick up food boxes. “I can’t believe you guys even think to offer breakfast or lunch to our little ones while we wait. It means so much.”

The food Adriana picked up while she was out of work was a vital bridge for her family’s survival. Now that she has found work again, she still stops by the Food Bank once a month because raising four boys aged 5 to 18 as a single mom isn’t easy. Whenever she receives an abundance of produce, Adriana has the boys take the excess to struggling seniors in their apartment complex.