Salvation Army hoping for donations during Love Beyond Hunger food drive

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Imagine waking up in the morning and not knowing where your next meal is coming from, for many here in the heartland that is reality. The Salvation Army’s food pantry is working to help those families in need.

The Salvation Army needs our help, because more people need help putting food on the table.

The number of people gathering groceries at the Salvation Army’s Burrow Center is on the rise. The rising cost of food is forcing many families to get some of their groceries there.

“We’ve even seen some families who, maybe we were engaged in serving them five or six years ago and things started to improve for them, now we’re seeing them come back because the money that they’re making just isn’t meeting the same need that they continue to have,” said Captain Kelsie Moreno with the Salvation Army.

Todd Pohlaski gets food from the Burrow Center just to make it through the month. Todd, like many others, is just trying to get by.

“Not eating ribeye, you know what I’m saying, so some hot dogs, mac and cheese, when I went to school that’s what we lived on,” Pohlaski said.

The Salvation Army is working to help a growing number of people and families to get basic supplies that many take for granted.

“Month over month we’ve just seen our numbers trend upwards with people needing food assistance. Coming to the door and just needing that little extra help to make it through to make sure there’s food on their table at home.”

“We always need cereal, peanut butter, think about the staples you would buy at the grocery store, canned fruit, canned pasta, meal kits, Hamburger Helper is a popular request.”

Todd is grateful for the Salvation Army’s food pantry, but many of the shelves here are empty. The Army is also dealing with the high cost of food to put on these shelves.

“We do as best as we can to stretch dollars as far as we can, that’s why we really rely on, the donations of the community to make sure these shelves stay full.”

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