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1.5 million people in North Carolina live in poverty.
Action Pathways ensures the people of southeastern NC have a pathway to self-sufficiency
with programs designed to help others help themselves.
Hunger
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- In NC, 1,248,880 face food insecurity
- In NC, 353,450 Children face food insecurity
- 109,980 in Southeast North Carolina face food insecurity
- 41,880 Children in Southeast North Carolina face food insecurity
Housing
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- In NC, 69 % of low-income people spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities
- In NC, 30 % of households in skipped food or medicine to pay their energy bill
- In NC, 32,189 children under 5 are homeless
Education
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- In NC, 5,956 licensed early childhood centers
- In NC, 247,000 children in early childhood settings daily, 77% are from birth to 5 years old
- In NC, 23,679 children enrolled in Early Childhood Education
Empowerment
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- In NC, 1,000,000 households without transportation
- In NC, 72% experiencing homelessness
- In NC, 13.9% without high school diploma and 15.9% lived in poverty
FIND YOUR HEAD START CENTER
[Intro Music]
Thank you
[Music]
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] Our food pantry has been active for probably going on 40 years, and at least 35 of that, of those years, we’ve been associated with the Second Harvest Food Banks. We go down to the food bank, Second Harvest, pick up food, bring it up here, unload it, serve the people. We pick up a trailer load of canned goods and things like macaroni and elbows and spaghetti and so forth, and we load it all on the trailer. You can see we already have offloaded quite a bit already, so we come in with the trailer, then we have two different tables. Well, if I go back when I first started about 14 years ago, we served 25 households a week, and then going into the pandemic time-frame we were probably serving maybe 60 or 70, and so through the pandemic and afterwards, now we’re up to about 120 households.
[Teresa Murray, Volunteer] Like I said, we’ve got a big variety of people here.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] About a third of the people that we serve are seniors, and maybe 25 are children, and quite-quite a few people have some form of disability.
[Roberta Butler, Volunteer] It’s good to see the people, and you see the same people come back, and know that there’s a need in the community.
[Joseph Williams, Volunteer] I come here to get some food because I was hungry, and I noticed all these people; elderly women, elderly men, or whatever, they couldn’t carry their bags, so I started carrying bags out to people’s cars, and four years later here I am still doing it.
[KJ Powell, Volunteer] It is the church’s largest outreach.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] People find out about us through the Department of Social Services, through Second Harvest, through word of mouth.
[Teresa Murray, Volunteer] I mean, I think we do a really good thing with our community, and I think our community really appreciates it. KJ’s wonderful with the people; when she talks to them, she knows everybody by their name by now because she’s been doing the book.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] She takes the names and all the information that we need for our monthly report on the children, adults, seniors, male, female, that sort of thing that we need to do our monthly report. She takes all that.
[KJ Powell, Volunteer] I can greet all of them, and you get to know them. You get to know what’s going on in their lives.
[Joseph Williams, Volunteer] Anything I can do to stop somebody from being hungry, I’m with it.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] And that’s what we are, we’re providing hope.
[Teresa Murray, Volunteer] It just feels good to give back.
[Roberta Butler, Volunteer] I enjoy volunteering and being able to give back.
[Joseph Williams, Volunteer] After we leave here, Steve and I, we load up a certain number of bags on the trailer. We go down to the hood, which is not far from here. Haymount Hill or The Heights, we go down in there and take bags to people who can’t get here.
[Teresa Murray, Volunteer] And see, we always leave four bags up here by the elevator, and that way if somebody comes after we’re closed, or they come during the week, they can get a bag and, then they have like little goodie bags sitting at the desk that they give to somebody if they need something. So we give out everything that we’re handing out.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] Second Harvest is probably 80 percent of what we’re handing out.
[KJ Powell, Volunteer] Second Harvest – we couldn’t do this without Second Harvest, there’s just absolutely no way. It makes a huge impact on what we’re able to provide to families.
[Steve Hill, Food Bank Director, Highland Presbyterian Church] As Second Harvest has things in abundance, they help us to provide to the community in
abundance. The staff at Second Harvest were always very friendly and helpful; it’s been a very warm relationship.
[KJ Powell, Volunteer] It just becomes a little bit of a family out here. [Roberta Butler, Volunteer] If anybody needs a place to be and volunteer, be sure and come; we can always use the help.Thank You
[Outro Music]
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