“I Will Do Everything I Can For Them”

Jayme is a mother of three in New York City, doing the impossible math of covering food, rent, and Wi-Fi every month on a tight budget. Rising grocery prices force tradeoffs — cheaper, less healthy options instead of the fresh food she wants for her kids.

The pantry changes that equation: a recent visit brought home spinach, kale, chicken, and ground beef, freeing up money she’d otherwise spend on groceries to go toward rent and Wi-Fi instead. For Jayme, the pantry isn’t occasional help — it’s how she keeps her family’s month covered, from dinner to homework to a roof overhead.

Give today and help moms like Jayme make the math work.

Hunger Action Month is powered by Wonder through the Grubhub Community Fund.

Transcript:

Jayme, Mom of three from the Bronx:

Come on, baby.

I walk 24 minutes over here, then wait on the line, and it’s hot outside. But we make a little trip out of it, where he gets to ride his scooter.

Amelia, she’s three. Aubrey’s eleven, and Timothee is nine. They’re my world. I would do everything I can for them. Make a way.

They do get hungry, so we gotta worry about what their next meal is.

Sandwiches?

Yeah.

I always put the food first because the kids gotta eat first.

Thank you.

Got it?

Yeah.

Then rent, the Wi-Fi, because they do homework all on the computer now.

Like, if I don’t have Wi-Fi once in a while, we’ll have to come outside, grab onto, like, a McDonald’s Wi-Fi, ShopRite. It’s hard. But my grandma always told me, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” So I try to do what I can.

If the rent is late a couple of days, then my landlord is okay with it.

It’s harder now. The fruits—two years ago, they were two dollars. Now they’re, like, six dollars for strawberries.

The meats are expensive. I have to go for what’s cheaper, like pork chops because they’re the cheapest, or the boxed macaroni and cheese.

You get the cheaper things instead of what I really wanna get.

Chicken?

Yeah.

You know, a family pack of chicken or, you know, better vegetables and fruits.

It’s rough because, you know, picking cheaper stuff goes toward your health also.

So I want better stuff, healthier stuff.

So coming to the food pantry does help.

I got the spinach, the kale. I got chicken, and I got—I think it’s ground beef.

It feels good because I know I got some stuff that I need, and I don’t gotta worry about it for a bit.

It helps me a lot when I’m running low on the food inside the house.

It’s really appreciated, and my family relies on it a lot during the month.