2024 Summer Appeal supporting Food Outreach
2024 Summer Appeal supporting Food Outreach
About 2024 Summer Appeal
At Food Outreach, we know good nutrition supports chronic illness treatment and plays a major role in our clients’ overall wellness. Our services disrupt the cycle of nutrition insecurity, malnutrition, and poor health by connecting clients to the resources they need to maintain a balanced diet and manage their diagnoses. As research demonstrates, providing Medically Tailored Meals (MTM) to individuals living with nutrition insecurity and chronic illness is one of the least expensive and most effective ways to achieve improved and more equitable health outcomes.
More community members need our services each year. Through intakes provided by our registered dietitians, Food Outreach welcomed 592 new clients in 2023, a 10% increase over 2022. Moreover, 39% of these individuals were experiencing moderate to severe malnutrition, indicating issues which need to be addressed quickly as nutrition emergencies. Along with this and the many other stressors our clients experience each day, 83% of these individuals live at or below 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or $15,060 in annual income.
Our clients tell us that Food Outreach’s strengths are the nutrition which fuels their bodies and the dependability of our team of volunteers and staff. Our volunteers consistently show up for our clients. During 2023, Food Outreach benefited from the work and support of 1,705 volunteers—the equivalent of 10 full-time employees. We never have to sell our mission to our volunteers; many have battled cancer treatment themselves or with their loved ones, have lost partners to AIDS, or have parents and family members who struggle to manage chronic illnesses. Our volunteers, alongside Food Outreach’s 17 employees, understand that our bodies must have proper nutrition to work with treatments for improved health. Each member of the Food Outreach team plays a vital role in providing our services with care and expertise in every aspect of this special agency.
No one else in the state of Missouri or western Illinois does what we do. We are the only agency providing nutrition to support treatment for individuals living with the devastating effects of HIV and cancer.
With your generosity in the coming year, we will cook and deliver more than 500,000 freshly prepared, medically tailored meals that will help our clients feel better physically and give them the love and support we all deserve.
Together we can make nutritious food accessible to all.
Please make a year-end donation and help us meet an unprecedented and growing need in our community.
Date
Starts at: June 15, 2024 12:00 AM
Ends at: June 15, 2024 12:00 AM
Location
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Contact
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Meet Joan, Food Outreach Home Delivery Client
After her diagnosis of lung cancer, Joan Long was struggling to get the nourishment she needed to get through her chemotherapy and immunotherapy. A nurse referred Joan to Food Outreach for nutrition counseling and support, but Joan was worried she wouldn’t be able to get to Food Outreach since she and her husband are housebound. Joan was thrilled when she learned that Food Outreach offered a home delivery program and would deliver scratch-prepared entrees and sides as well as nutritious groceries right to her door.
Almost immediately, Joan noticed that the side effects of her cancer treatment lessened. Joan especially likes the chicken dishes and the butternut squash macaroni and cheese. “This food is such a huge help to people with cancer and getting treatments. You get tired. You're tired and having to go and make a meal is very hard. But with Food Outreach you just need to heat it up. It's just so easy and delicious. You look forward to it because it is so good.”
The home delivery program enables Joan to receive the monthly box of scratch-prepared entrees and sides along with nutritious groceries and fresh produce. However, it also offers Joan emotional support with the handmade card included in each delivery box. “I always love receiving the hand-drawn card that someone drew for me that has encouragement for the cancer person. It just shows that someone who doesn't know me is rooting for me. And it helps. I'm one of these people, when I get a card, I put it out on my desk so I can see it for a month. I would hang onto that card until the next one came, and then I would put that one on the desk. And just to read it every day gave me encouragement—just to know that people out there don't even know me are praying and rooting for me.”
A waitress for 46 years at the original Massa’s Italian Restaurant, Joan knows good food. She was their longest serving employee until she was forced to retire due a depressed disc in her neck. “I was lucky to find a job where I could talk and get paid. I loved it. I loved it.”
After rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy, Joan is on the road to recovery. “I'm one of these people that when things go bad, I find a way to laugh at it and go on. And when they gave me the diagnosis of cancer, I didn't get depression or anything. I just said, ‘I’m in God's hands’ and whatever he did—I'm okay. I could be one of these miracles because my primary doctor told me that my body is responding so well to this immunotherapy. It's how he hopes all his patients would respond to it.”
