The Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana plans to provide Delaware County senior citizens relief with food packages, allowing their fixed incomes to go further.
Beginning next month, the program will provide 150 residents of the county 60 years of age and older, who also meet income guidelines, with a 40-pound box of free food each month.
The program is opening in Delaware County for the first time, and it is only approved for one year, but expanding the program is not an unrealistic option.
Carissa Harrington, a senior social work major at Ball State, has been working on the program for over a year and has made it a personal goal of hers to see the program become full time before she graduates next spring.
“I would love to see Delaware come on as a full-time county, because there is such a huge need for it. It’s unbelievable. So that would be a great going away present,” she said.
The need for this kind of aid has been made evident already, Harrington said. The program has seen applications come in at a rate as high as 75 per day.
The application process will continue for two more days, next Tuesday and Thursday.
The program is not new to the state of Indiana. Neighboring counties, Wabash and Randolph, each serve 400 senior citizens already.
Program director Nicole Miles said recipients of this program will no longer be forced to make a decision between food and other necessities.
“A lot of seniors just don’t have the income that it takes to purchase medications that they may need,” Miles said. “And at the end of the day, they just don’t have money to purchase food.”
Miles said they will accept as many applications as they can, and ideally will use a wait-list system that would allow for applicants who do not make the first 150 spots to receive food if a spot opens up.
Kara Cambell, a 71-year-old applicant, said she hasn’t heard of another program that provides this service.
She said she is applying because her family’s medical bills are high and the food will improve what her family eats.
“I think it’s [the program is] very good and a lot of people will be able to eat now,” she said.
Working with community members like Cambell is one reason Harrington said she loves her job.
Harrington started with Second Harvest a little over a year ago answering phones and doing miscellaneous paperwork. In order to make her experience more immersive, her role expanded to becoming a Commodity Supplemental Food Program assistant.
She said seeing the program move to her home county meant a lot to her, and she is excited for the future.
“It’s my baby,” Harrington said of the program. “I have built so many great relationships with the people on it, and I was jumping up and down when I found out we brought on Delaware County.”
