2022GivingGuide

Sunday, November 27, 2022 | Special Advertising Section 1 R 30 As prices soar, community organizations rise for neighbors in need Food banks are rationing food as shelves empty out at unprecedented rates. Food stamp applications have soared across the state. And a swell of evictions in the coming months is becoming likely for many. This isn’t a recollection of the stresses of the pandemic. With inflation soaring, this is now— when the need is just as great as it was at the peak of COVID-19. A mother of two beautiful kids, Juliana had never known hunger or housing instability like this before. Working two jobs overtime and using 90% of her income to pay rent, there simply wasn’t enough money left to bring food to the table. She had become a regular at her overstretched, local food bank to avoid malnutrition and keep her family barely fed. “This financial struggle has been a tax on our health and well-being. The human costs simply can’t be measured in dollars,” she says. As pandemic-era programs sunset, and funding that once enabled nonprofits to create innovative and equitable ways to help people with food and housing fade, many of our neighbors are struggling to cope with historic inflation. Hunger is especially unequal in communities of color: To talk numbers, 32% of our Black and 26% of our Latino neighbors and friends experience food insecurity compared to just 7% of white adults. While existing systems struggle with the demand, the good news is that our community organizations are stepping up to this new wave of need and are working together to help families like Juliana’s with basic necessities. And United Way of King County has made it its business to propel this work forward with community partners. UnitedWay and fellow organizations rooted in communities of color are working together with Seattle-area food banks and DoorDash to deliver more than 6,700 free, culturally relevant groceries each week to combat food insecurity across our region through their UnitedWay Home Grocery Delivery program. They’re closing in on nearly half a million United Way of King County is working toward a racially just community where all people have homes, students graduate and families are financially stable. Learn more at uwkc.org/donate. deliveries, setting this program apart as the largest food bank delivery service in the nation. “Thanks to this program, some of my worries are alleviated. With food taken care of, I can now finally imagine thinking about other things — like seeing a health care provider, something I haven’t done in years,” says Juliana. While putting food on families’ tables is one thing, having a home to put that food in is quite another. As rents continue to rise, the number of people experiencing homelessness in our region is only expected to get higher. UnitedWay believes that the best way to fight homelessness is to prevent PROVIDED BY UNITED WAY OF KING COUNTY United Way of King County volunteers prepare boxes of food for distribution in neighborhoods county-wide. people from becoming homeless in the first place. With help from partner providers, UnitedWay has supported more than 22,000 households with rental assistance since the pandemic. And even as they continue to distribute over $1 million each week to prevent families from getting evicted, it’s still not meeting the rising need. Federally funded programs for economic recovery may be ending, but UnitedWay continues to be firm in its quest for a just recovery. Now more than ever, your support is needed to help feed our neighbors and keep them in their homes this winter and beyond. And if we work together, we can make every dollar count. “Everybody’s touched by these economic times, everybody’s touched by what they see happening around us,” says Patty Meden, a long-standing community volunteer serving as co-chair of the 2023 UnitedWay fundraising campaign. “You have to have empathy, but you have to get up and do something about it.” After all, the good gets better when you give. Don’t you agree?

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