Harlingen Salvation Army food pantry sees drop in donations
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A critical resource for families in the lower Rio Grande Valley is running on empty.
The Salvation Army is pausing its food box distributions for September. They have a storage room that should be full of vegetables, pastas, beans and cereal, but now sits nearly empty.
"Some of these people are going to be going hungry, and it's not cool," Harlingen resident Tanya Pherigo said.
Pherigo volunteers at the Salvation Army in Harlingen, but she also regularly comes to pick up food for herself.
"There's times where we struggle, but right now, we're making due with what we have," Pherigo said. "But for these [people] that have nothing, I felt bad. I felt bad because they have nowhere to go."
The Salvation Army in Harlingen helps people in both Cameron and Willacy counties. They said people have donated less money in recent months.
"It's a little bit harder for people to donate as much as they used to donate, which is understanding," Salvation Army in Harlingen Major Angel Hernandez said.
The Salvation Army in Harlingen typically fills boxes with different types of foods including rice, beans, vegetables, but with such a low supply this month, it's not enough to fill those boxes and feed 300 families.
"We have enough to give them a can of vegetables or a little bag of chicken, but then that's it. Not enough to make a whole meal, and we would like for them to have a meal," Hernandez said.
Hernandez says the noticed donations drop over the last year.
"Our freezers are empty right now, we usually have it full of fish," Hernandez said.
Fish that they normally pass out during distributions held on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. Because of the drop in donations, they paused the remaining September distribution drives.
"It hurt us, because we have never ever stopped before and people have been coming, and the need is great," Hernandez said.
Hernandez says in the two and a half years they've been at the Harlingen location, this is the first time they've paused donations.
Both workers and volunteers hope donations from the community pick back up, so they can continue to help people in the community.
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