“The Rent Can Wait, But Not the Food”

At PS 19Q in Corona, Queens, devoted parents like Juana Yagual, whose son is in fifth grade, line up around the block for the Campus Pantry. Despite working full-time as a property manager in Manhattan, Juana often faces impossible choices: “I have to decide if the rent can wait, but not the food.” When asked what the Campus Pantry gives her family of five, Juana simply says, “peace.” But summer brings months of uncertainty—school stops, but hunger doesn’t. With no pantry until October, families face the hardest season alone.

Help become part of “the village” these families need during the summer months when school support disappears.

Transcript:

Juana Yagual:

As a parent, you really wanna get everything and the best for your kids and send them out to school and learn. But, also as a parent, there are times when I have to decide if the rent can wait a little, but not the food. I have to feed the children. I have to be able to send them to bed with something in their stomach.

Sheba Giraldovallejo:

The struggle is real, and the struggle is…is apparent everywhere that you look, especially for families here.

Juana Yagual:

If you’re not one of the first twenty or fifties and you’re, what, at the very end of the line, you’re not gonna be able to get all that was available at the beginning.

You have to stop work or you have to miss work to be able to come and get this for free because otherwise, youmight not be able to buy all the things that you’re getting here.

Nowadays, food is expensive.

Sheba Giraldovallejo:

Inflation is really impacting our families. It’s really hurting their bottom lines.

Our parents are not able to stretch their budget. We’re able to at least fill their pantry enough to make it to payday or make it to next week.

Juana Yagual:

It gives me peace, and emotionally, it’s…it’s overwhelming. It gives you a sense of somehow crying because I know I made it, and I know I’m gonna bring home food for my family, and I don’t have to worry about it.

Sheba Giraldovallejo:

Our families work so much and they work crazy hours, so they really rely on the public school system.
So, if their child doesn’t get food through free lunch and breakfast, they’re not gonna be able to eat. They’re gonna have to find another way to feed them.

We do our best to stretch our budget as much as we can, but we don’t have funding during the summer. So, most of our families are unfortunately are going to have to find another source for that.

For those that can write a check, and those that can, you know, make a financial contribution, if you heard just a quarter of the stories that we hear on a daily basis, you would know just how far that check can go for us.

You know, the old saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ And for many of these families, we are that village.