This is Cheryl Jackson, founder of Minnie’s Food Pantry. Let me tell you what we did together in 2020.
We started off the year with a 6-month waiting list for people to volunteer and were running our food pantry, educational programs, and partnerships as usual. One March 16th everything changed. I received a phone called from Plano ISD and McKinney ISD saying there were thousands of children who needed a meal and they needed our help.
I remember that moment as I was looking at our shelf and we had just counted having only 60 boxes of cereal. Channel 4 was standing in front of me and they asked, "how are you going to help thousands of families when you don't even have 100 boxes of cereal?" The tears began to flow, but my response was “I believe our community will help us meet the need.”
We launched the “Hunger is Everywhere and So Are We” campaign and our trucks hit the road. We had places to go and people to feed. We knew we were called for this moment and we rose to the occasion.
The best part of the day was when we installed a bell at the back of our building for our food drop-offs. Ms. Minnie’s middle name was “BELL.” You can’t imagine how many tears we shed every time we ran out of a particular food item and the bell would ring with the exact food needed for that day. We all believe our angel in heaven Ms. Minnie Bell, was speaking to you, the angels on earth to help us fulfill our mission.
We learned a new way to offer our red carpet service. We became a mobile drive-thru experience. The words of hope that we once spoke into everyone's lives became words on a display sign held by a person wearing a mask. However, that didn't stop us from playing our music and dancing at every giveaway so people understood that we were here and we cared.
Let's talk numbers. To put things in perspective, in 2019, Minnie’s Food Pantry supplied 1.4 million meals to our community.
In 2020, all of our signature programs experienced record-breaking numbers. Here's what we did together!
