{"id":17563,"date":"2021-11-25T19:25:22","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=17563"},"modified":"2021-11-25T19:25:58","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:25:58","slug":"blessings-and-hope-food-pantry-is-now-looking-for-help-to-build-a-warehouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/11\/25\/blessings-and-hope-food-pantry-is-now-looking-for-help-to-build-a-warehouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Blessings and Hope Food Pantry is now looking for help to build a warehouse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The spike in the cost of food is hitting communities facing food insecurity the hardest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every week Bobbie Jo Joiner drives through the Blessings and Hope Food Pantry<\/a> distribution line in Lakeland, where she receives groceries to feed her entire family. She said the soaring prices at the supermarket has made it hard to put food on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t leave out of the store with just a few items and its $50 already. That’s hurtful right now, on everybody,\u201d said Joiner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The groceries Joiner receives will be used to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. \u201cNow I don\u2019t have to worry if we\u2019re going to have something to eat on Thanksgiving, so this is amazing,\u201d Joiner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 14% of Polk County residents experience food insecurity according to Feeding America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPolk County is the number two in the United States, county for food insecurity,\u201d said Rev. Allan Fretto, President of Blessings and Hope Food Pantry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fretto saw the number of families served by Blessings and Hope Food Pantry climb from 500 families at the beginning of the pandemic, to now nearly 700 families. He said they\u2019ve outgrown the building that stores the food and are now looking for help to build a warehouse.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI\u2019m moving pallets and pallets. Tens of thousands of pounds of food every day to make room in here. If we have a construction firm out there that could help us with materials,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, they\u2019ll continue to help those who don\u2019t know where their next meal will come from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spike in the cost of food is hitting communities facing food insecurity the hardest. Every week Bobbie Jo Joiner drives through the Blessings and Hope Food Pantry distribution line in Lakeland,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1813],"class_list":["post-17563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-blessings-and-hope-food-pantry-is-now-looking-for-help-to-build-a-warehouse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}