When I was a freshman, I joined a new group at my school, the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council where student volunteers regularly meet with Otsego’s Public School’s amazing superintendent, Jeff Haase. I’ve been active with the group all four years of high school, and this year I am Co-President.
The purpose of the group is to make the school a better place by sharing the student’s perspective and voice. We’re encouraged to have ideas, and we’ve learned that an idea is just an idea until you put some work behind it to implement the change.
This past fall, I noticed there was a LOT of uneaten fruit in the garbage at lunchtime. I suggested to the superintendent that we allow students to say “no thank you” to the fruit when it was offered, and he suggested I meet with the food service staff at the school. I learned the Michigan School Meals program, which funds the free lunch program, requires that fresh fruit or a vegetable be provided with each student lunch.
I continued to see large amounts of fruit in the garbage and began to brainstorm ways to get the fruit into the hands of people who need it. While working with Otsego’s food service staff in late 2024, the idea of the “Share Table” was born. If a student does not eat their fruit, they can place it in a basket on the Share Table, rather than in the garbage. The OPS Director of Communications, Holly McCaw, helped me share the idea with the entire student body, and the idea has been embraced by everyone.
Two or three times a week, I deliver the food to Christian Neighbors. The total weekly weight ranges from 115-150 pounds. The Share Table is just getting started, but I’m excited about sharing that food with people in need. I’m thankful to go to school where the superintendent cares about the students enough to encourage and empower them, and where the food service staff, students, and administration were all willing to help.
- Lexi, Otsego High School
November is the month of thanks! As I look back so far on this journey here at Christian Neighbors I have a sense of thanks, gratitude, humility, and responsibility.
THANKS: I am thankful for the incredible people who make our work at Christian Neighbors possible—our dedicated staff and volunteers, committed board members, generous donors, and supportive community members, church, and business partners. Every single person plays a vital role in helping us fulfill our mission. In a world that can sometimes feel divided, the grace and empathy shown by all associated with Christian Neighbors gives me hope.
GRATITUDE: I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the generosity and support we receive every day. The willingness of our volunteers and donors to give of their time, treasure, and talent humbles me. Whether it’s stocking the food pantry, working in our Education Resource Center, or contributing financially, every act of kindness makes a tangible difference in the lives of those we serve. I am grateful for the trust the community has placed in Christian Neighbors to help meet the needs of individuals and families in crisis.
HUMILITY: It is humbling to witness the resilience and strength of the individuals and families who come through our doors. Every story is a reminder that hardship can touch anyone at any time. I am honored to be in a position where our organization can help, but I also realize our work is only possible because of the collective efforts of so many. I am constantly reminded this is not a solo journey, but a community effort.
RESPONSIBILITY: With this position comes a profound sense of responsibility. The needs are great, but we remain committed to serving with integrity and transparency. It is my responsibility to ensure Christian Neighbors continues to be a beacon of hope, providing essential services like food, emergency financial assistance, and educational skills to those who need it most, as well as, connecting community members through shared learning and life experiences. I am committed to using our resources wisely and fostering partnerships that will allow us to expand our reach and impact. Together, we can build a stronger, more compassionate community for all.
When you hear statistics about systemic issues such as poverty, you can begin to understand the hardships, but when you actually experience it first-hand is when you can truly begin to appreciate and empathize with the true struggles of those living in poverty. This is what the whole premise of a Poverty Simulation is designed to encapsulate. Christian Neighbors recently hosted a poverty simulation in the basement of our new Education Resource Center. We had about 45 local community members from various organizations and entities participating. The poverty simulation, licensed through Missouri Community Action Network, addresses the challenges of living with limited resources and an abundance of stress. Participants are assigned specific roles in a family and given real-life circumstances to work through. The role-play, or simulation, is a powerful way to convey the real-world obstacles of securing food and shelter, maintaining the family, and negotiating support systems, agencies, and real-world circumstances.
I was the facilitator of this simulation and was able to roam the room and observe some of the happenings and interactions. I saw individuals and family units who were very confused and clearly didn’t know where to turn next. They would go to one place, only to be told to go to yet another place, and by the end of the week they still didn’t have the help they needed to feed their children or keep their home. Many families in the simulation were evicted, some lost their transportation and some even stole in order to provide for their children. From my perspective, the poverty simulation was an incredibly accurate depiction of the decisions one may face when they are struggling to make ends meet.
In a few months, we will be doing another simulation. This one will be for the educators at Plainwell Community Schools as part of their professional development. The hope is for these educators to see the effects of poverty from the perspective of their students and their families who are actually living it. They will hopefully then be able to better understand and empathize with the struggles their students have and why they may be acting a certain way or why parents may simply not have time to easily be a part of their child’s education.
We also do simulations for social service agencies, hospitals and any other organizations or businesses who are interested. If you think your school district, business, organization, or employer would benefit from taking part in a poverty simulation, please contact Kim at kshafer@christianneighbors.org.
One of the keys to ending poverty is to not only increase awareness in the community, but to also spread the realization of the complexities involved in the world of poverty and how the system often keeps people in poverty instead of helping to lift them out of it. Poverty Simulations help firsthand with this realization.
To be, or not to be? That is the question. This is in reference to how busy we are in our food pantry. It is always a difficult question for us. If we aren’t busy, does that mean folks have enough food or have found other resources? If we are busy, then that means we have more hungry families in our community, but yet we are certainly happy that they have found us and are comfortable using our services. We wish the answer to this question was simple.
What we do know right now is that visits to our food pantry have picked up immensely in the past several months. During COVID, there were measures in place to provide extra food benefits and support. Families, seniors, veterans and others were automatically receiving extra EBT food benefits through the federal and state government. There were also extra actions being taken through grant and relief dollars. Most, if not all, of this extra support has been phased out and families find themselves struggling to stretch their budgets to once again cover food, especially during a time when the cost of most basic necessities have skyrocketed. This makes them even more reliant on local resources, such as our food pantry.
We currently have more food going out than what is coming in. This is often an issue in the summer months, because kids are out of school and eating all their meals and snacks at home. This causes families to need more food during these months and visit our pantry more often to help feed their families. You will see us having more food drives and asking more often for food and money to help keep our shelves stocked. I would like to say that once fall comes it will slow down, but the holiday season always bring more need as well. While we may not be able to decide whether being busy is a good or a bad thing, what we can decide upon is the fact that our community always generously helps us to ensure no local families go hungry. That will certainly never be in question.
Picture above shows how low on food the shelves have become.
How do you fill the voids or holes in your life? When you recognize the fact that there needs to be changes in order to move forward successfully, you begin to find positive ways to fill those holes. Whether it be reconnecting with old friends, finding a new job, going back to school, taking up a new hobby or finding forgiveness for someone who may need it.
Our mission at Christian Neighbors for nearly forty years has been to provide short-term emergency food and financial assistance to those in need in the community. We also have a small education program, but have long recognized that there is more we can offer to help local families become more stabilized in their homes. For many of our clients to move forward successfully, they need supportive services to help with some of their barriers that cause voids in their life. We have a vision here at Christian Neighbors to fill that void of long-term stabilization. As the walls slowly go up on our new Education and Resource Center, we can see our vision coming to fruition.
The Education and Resource Center will offer many opportunities to help local families on the path to housing stabilization. We have many families who are denied housing because of their credit and they remain homeless or in unaffordable housing because of it. Another program at the new center will be financial mentoring and budget classes. These will teach self-sufficiency skills and strengthen long term budgeting habits. The demonstration kitchen will offer healthy cooking classes and affordable meal planning. We will host a weekly Resource Navigation Workshop where folks can stop in and have access to a computer in our new computer lab. They will be assisted with navigating and signing up for any resources available to them and any other functions, like filling out job and housing applications for instance. All of these programs, and many others that we will be offered at the new center, are designed to help guide those in need in the county with a path to housing stabilization.
We took a leap of faith when the means became available to help us fill the void in the community for better housing stabilization. We know God is good and worthy of our trust. Our cup runneth over and we will continue to let it overflow and bless the community with the offerings of our new Education and Resource Center.
Is there such a thing as being back to normal? For us at Christian Neighbors, that means we are able to bring people together in a time of fellowship and generosity to support the good work of our ministry. It had been three years since we were able to host our annual auction event in person. There was a lot of anxiety and nerves when making the decision to host this event in person this year, but once we put it in the Lord’s hands, it all seemed to come together. It turned out to be a beautiful night, not only was the weather warm but so were our hearts from the outpouring of love and support we received from a roomful of people who were there to be sure we have the funds for our emergency housing and utility program for this year.
We also had the Mail Carrier Food Drive that same week for the first time in 3 years. This is our largest food drive of the year and produces around 15,000 pounds of food for us. As you can imagine, that amount of food helps keep local families in need fed for many months. It was so nice to see the pantry bustling again with volunteers from local churches, who helped sort and stock the food as it was dropped off by postal workers. Speaking of postal workers, we can’t thank them enough for all of their hard work picking up full bags of food at the mailboxes on their routes and dropping them off to us at Christian Neighbors.
We also had some of our other events again for the first time in several years, including Stuff the Bus and soup suppers. Although we learned to adapt to what was happening with COVID and held some events online and virtually, it was definitely not the same. There is something magical about the energy that is derived from people coming together at an event or venue to support local families in need.
We may never get back completely to what is considered normal and there may be a new normal adopted that proves to be more successful. Along with this blog are some photos from our auction event and Post Office Food Drive. How does the saying go? A picture is worth a 1,000 words. There are not enough words to describe how all the smiles in this photo depicts what being normal again feels like.
I couldn’t believe it when I opened my electric bill last month for my home. It was almost $250. I thought for sure we had somehow forgotten to pay last month and so this was a double bill. Nope, after looking at the next page that details the usage, it was in fact for just one month. The thing is, our usage was about the same as the previous months, so the sharp increase was all due to an increase in pricing. Now don’t get me wrong, I thankfully have the means to pay the bill, but it was startling and I will pay closer attention to my bills from now on.
What worries me the most about these drastic increases is the people who can no longer afford to pay their monthly utility bills. Our local seniors and disabled folks who live on a fixed income are given a nominal raise each year and were already struggling to pay their bills. Such a drastic increase for them is a catastrophic blow that many will not be able to survive. 53% of those we serve at Christian Neighbors fall into this category. Where will the money come from in their budget? Will they stop getting their medication, will they start rationing food or will they go without electric or heat? These are decisions that we at Christian Neighbors try to help them avoid.
Here is what one of our senior clients, Miss Eloise, had to say:
“My electric bill has doubled in the past 6 months. I live on $793 a month and cannot pay my full bill now that it is so high. The electric company eventually sent me a shut-off notice and my power would have been cut off if Christian Neighbors hadn’t stepped in and caught my bill up. I sometimes ration food so I don’t have to spend so much at the grocery store. Christian Neighbors gives me food each month so I don’t have to go hungry. I feel like it gets harder each day to survive. I would be awfully hungry and cold without Christian Neighbors.”
There has been so much uncertainty over the past few years and now the increase in inflation and pricing adds a whole new element to the mix. One thing we can be certain of though is that Christian Neighbors is here to help those we serve to navigate through these trying times and to help make sure their basic necessities are met.
Christian Neighbors is so much more than just a food pantry. Don’t get me wrong, our food pantry is very important and an essential service for the community, however, a food pantry often seems to be only what people view as Christian Neighbors. In our outreach services, where we let folks know about who we are and what we do, one of the biggest responses I get is “I didn’t know Christian Neighbors did all that, I thought you were only a food pantry.”
A vast array of services under one roof is truly what sets us apart from other helping agencies. Families can get help with a heat bill or help with budgeting and meal planning. A Veteran’s Service Officer is on call to assist any veterans who may need help or guidance. We have case managers who meet with clients each time they come in to find out how they are doing and if there are any additional resources needed for the family. This helps us develop relationships and become a trusted source for many clients, especially elderly and disabled individuals who may not have much support in their lives.
We have clients who bring their mail in so we can read it to them or help them understand a letter they may have received. We know which single moms needs special soy formula so we can call them if some gets donated. We had a nurse from Allegan General Hospital call us recently because they had an elderly gentleman who was brought in and was very disoriented. He couldn’t remember much, but he did tell them that he comes to Christian Neighbors and they were able to reach out to us and get contact information for his family. A couple who had no money until the first of the month had a problem with the pipes for their drinking water. We were able to offer them bottled water until they could figure out their next step.
Christian Neighbors has become its own community. Families know they can turn to us and if we can help in any way, we will do just that. There is mutual trust and respect between staff, volunteers and the families who visit us. Above is a quote from someone who recently sought our services. We are grateful they felt so comfortable and safe while getting the help they needed.
I walked into my office one day and sitting next to my desk was a broom, dustpan and shower curtain. It seemed like a weird thing to show up in my office, but stranger things have shown up before. I later found out that one of our amazing volunteers had left these items in my office. She was talking with a young gentleman when he came in for food the previous day, and he mentioned he did not have these items. I’ve never seen someone so happy to receive a shower curtain. As he skipped away with items in hand, he announced that he would finally be able to take a real shower. This is one of many examples of how our volunteers go above and beyond to help those who visit our agency. It’s those small gestures that mean the world to those who need extra support, receiving the basic needs and items most of us take for granted.
Volunteers are the heart and soul of any successful organization and Christian Neighbors is a true testament of this. Collectively, our volunteers dedicate over 4,000 hours each year, supporting the work of our ministry. To put it simply, we couldn’t do what we do without them. Our receptionists are the first face people see when they come in for help and our pantry workers are the last face they see when they leave. Our caring volunteers take the time to encourage those who come in and often know them by name.
My service at Christian Neighbors began as a volunteer. Like so many others, I had a passion to help feed hungry people in our area. I soon learned that Christian Neighbors is so much more than a food pantry. The organization is a community within itself with the sole purpose of helping local neighbors in need. This organization welcomes anyone in need and our volunteers are a vital part of that commitment.
We are highlighting our volunteers in August. You may see signs proudly displayed in their yards recognizing their service. Each group will be highlighted on our social media pages and newsletter. We are so grateful of their devotion to our mission. They deserve all of our thanks (though many of them are embarrassed when we thank them or recognize them). To them, it is just something they are called to do. They are full of heart. They are giving. They are appreciated.
If you want to reach success in life and money, then you have to have self-confidence. To have self-confidence you need to first trust yourself. No one is born with self-confidence... there is no such thing as a confident baby. To put it another way confidence is an equal playing field that anyone can achieve. This might sound crazy - but you become more confident the more you try and fail. The way you build trust is to just keep trying.
A good example is developing a budget. It can feel daunting at first. You may lack confidence in your ability to establish and even follow a budget. The first time you establish a budget can be overwhelming. This is why many fail to start in the first place. But if you keep trying, if you research, and save receipts, perhaps seek advice from a mentor; eventually you will become proficient in budgeting. A good budget can afford you the opportunity to improve your life and the lives of your family. You wont be caught reacting to the world around you...you will be in control.
You have to have thick skin to make change happen - especially during hard times. When you come out on the other side (and I believe you will) your self-confidence will grow. Success will come...eventually.
The past few months we have been doing major renovations at my home. Although I would never presume that my situation is anything like that of someone struggling with homelessness, it did give me a glimpse into the difficulties of everyday things that I have always taken for granted. There was nowhere to cook dinner, so we used a grill some of the time…..this would be considered a luxury item for a homeless family. I found myself asking where am I going to wash the dishes without a sink? I guess the bathtub will work…..homeless people do not have an alternative like this. We had to be confined to the same four walls in our bedrooms for several weeks as the rest of the house was torn apart. Homeless families all live together in a vehicle, tent or motel room for days, months and yes even years on end.
COVID-19 has put even more stress on the homeless situation in our area. Housing in general has become scarce, and affordable housing is nearly impossible to find. In the past, families have had to wait for several months for housing to open up….the waiting lists are now well over a year. Families are moving from couch to couch to couch each night, some are forced into tents in local woods and parks, and some pay the monthly rent on a storage unit and turn it into a makeshift home while they wait for something to open up. Many are left with no choice but to move into an apartment or home that is out of their budget range. For instance, last July we helped an elderly woman move into a local apartment by covering her security deposit. The monthly rent was $825. We found a utility assistance program for her and she visits our food pantry each month, but still barely scrapes by. Her rent has gradually been increasing and is now up to $1031 each month. She cannot go on much longer paying this high of rent. I cannot imagine the choices she has to make each month and the things she gives up to be able to pay her rent.
The only thing that relieved our stress of living out of boxes during the renovation was that we knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. Those who are homeless do not have this light. They do not know when or if their situation will end. Christian Neighbors works to be that light. We walk with them through their homeless struggles, finding resources, providing food and giving moral support. We do not give up until each person and each family has found their path to hope and a brighter light. We are working to end homelessness one family, one key, one home at a time.
