Feeding America coming to Maine to collect client stories

As you may know, Feeding America works with food banks and agencies across the country to gather personal stories from people who struggle to get enough to eat. The people you serve have a powerful voice. They can help us raise awareness about the problem of hunger, advocate for policies that protect people from going hungry, and build support for programs that get food to people in need.
 
Feeding America is asking for our help. They will be coming to Maine at the beginning of 2014 and have asked Good Shepherd Food Bank to work with our partners to find families who are willing to share their personal experience with hunger. We are seeking people who want to help us dispel myths about people who use food pantries to encourage support for hunger relief programs across the country. Currently Feeding America is looking for the following types of families:

-Dual parent households
-Adult children care giving for aging parents
-Single father households
-Grandparents caring for grandchildren 

If you know of clients who have a compelling story that they would be willing to share, we would appreciate your help in connecting with them. Feeding America plans to capture personal stories through interviews, photography and video.

It is common for people to shy away from talking about such a sensitive issue with strangers. Please know that Feeding America is very respectful of clients and always present their stories and images in a dignified and truthful manner. They use only first names and cities/towns to identify storytellers and respect that some of the information they share might be sensitive and not appropriate for sharing publicly. Through these conversations, we hope to build relationships with clients so that we can continue to engage them in our efforts to make ending hunger in America a priority.

Examples of client interviews that Feeding America has done in the past can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/feedingamerica. We want to make it as easy as possible for clients to share their stories with us, so we are extremely flexible. We can work around their schedule and the schedule of your agency. In return, the videos, photo and stories would be fully available for your agency to use for its communications or other purposes.

If you know of a client family who may be willing to share their story, please contact:

Clara Whitney, Communications Manager
Good Shepherd Food Bank
(207) 782-3554 ext. 1166
cwhitney@gsfb.org

Thank you!