In January 2010 our ministry opened the Safe Net Food Cupboard at 68 Main Street in Stafford Springs, CT. This food cupboard serves Stafford/ Union residents and any member of their congregations. This past year we have registered 322 families who received assistance. We have received 93,238lbs of food and have distributed 90,791lbs to our community. We obtained 81,682lbs food from Foodshare and an additional 11,556lbs came from local food drives and individual donations. This works out to about 69,000 meals! It cost $25,244 to run this cupboard in 2010. According to Food Share it is one of the top performing cupboards in their network and we were upgraded from a small to medium size cupboard after 5 months of operation. All we require is that prospective recipients come to the Food Cupboard with a picture ID and fill out a self-declaration of income form. The time and effort spent planning in 2009 enabled us to open the Food Cupboard in January 2010.
Safe Net was able to accomplish this task by becoming a Foodshare partner. This relationship enables us to obtain food at an average cost of 17 cents a pound. This is a remarkable advantage to Safe Net in meeting our goal of eliminating hunger in our town. There is no reason someone should be hungry in Stafford or Union! The Food Cupboard was relocated to our new building at 86 Main Street February 2011.
Qualification for food stamps (or as it is now called SNAP) is 185% of poverty; however Safe Net is able to distribute to families at 235% of poverty. This enables us to assist those who fall just short of the mark, along with those on SNAP and other state and federal programs. We do this at no cost to the people we serve. Safe Net’s primary mission is to assist those whose income is just a little over the cut off for services. Safe Net has faith that we will succeed and it is committed to this project.
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