“I Want To Have The Best For My Family”

Nancy started volunteering before the pandemic, but COVID showed her how fast “enough” can disappear. Now she stocks the shelves at the same pantry she gets help from, providing for her daughter while giving back to her community.

She tells other families there’s no shame in walking through the door.

“Everybody is struggling and that’s ok. Help is here for anyone who needs it. We’re all here for each other.”

Learn how you can help feed more NYC families like Nancy’s this holiday season.

Transcript:

Nancy, Food Bank For NYC Volunteer:

I started volunteering before COVID, but during COVID, I saw that, we couldn’t get all the things that we needed, like the food, everything else. So then it it encouraged me to come and help more because if I need the help, I could actually tell everybody else, you know, it’s fine to come over and it’s not something bad to come to the food pantry.

It helps because I know as a mother, I wanna have the best for my family even when I don’t have access to it. Tomato sauce?

Yeah. Thank you. You don’t know what everybody is going through. So having access to all of the services like the food pantry, it’s really helpful and gives you that sense that you’re even if you can’t do a lot, you’re doing something for your family.

Especially in the holidays, we’re worrying about the heating costs. Sometimes we have to pay for heating costs and, presents and a lot of things that we might need extra, like clothing and everything.

So giving us the food pantry helps us a lot because it’s gonna give us also the necessities that we need and not having us to worry a lot about what are we gonna eat next.