Food insecurity has serious impacts on an individual’s well-being, which may result in poor school attendance and performance, lowered workplace productivity, and physical and mental health problems.

Individuals struggling with food insecurity have to make tough decisions that no one should face. No family should have to decide between buying groceries or paying rent, no senior should have to choose between food and medicine, and no parent should have to skip a meal in order for their children to eat.

And those decisions are only magnified during the holidays.

St. Catherine’s Reach Out Food Pantry, an interfaith and community-wide effort to meet the needs of our food insecure neighbors, is working to try and fill those gaps. Last month, they helped 488 households that included 507 children, 818 adults, and 284 seniors and registered 77 new households. The need is real here in Morgan Hill.

There is much we can do right here in our communities to help end food insecurity. Please consider supporting and/or volunteering at any of several agencies in South Valley and spread the word about available food programs in our communities.

Saint Catherine’s Reachout

17400 Peak Ave., Morgan Hill

Stca.org/community-suppers

(408) 779-3959

Morgan Hill Senior Center

171 W. Edmundson Ave.

Morgan-hill-ca-gov/259/seniorcenter

(408) 782-1284

Morgan Hill Unified School District

(at Live Oak High School) 1505 E. Main Ave.

Mhusd.org/covid/weekly-lunch-pick-up

(408) 201-6000

Mt. Madonna YMCA

171 W. Edmundson Ave.

ymcasv.org

(408) 782-2128

Edward Boss Prado Foundation

35 Peebles Ave., Morgan Hill

(408) 778-7411

During the holidays, Reachout likes to offer traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas foods for their guests, if possible, for both a traditional turkey dinner and the fixin’s for tamales, a traditional food in many homes. This year Second Harvest is not able to provide turkeys, so Reachout really needs donations of turkeys and pork roasts.

Use your holiday generosity to purchase anything you think our neighbors might like in their homes during the holidays — turkeys and pork roasts, canned cranberries and sweet potatoes and pumpkin, stuffing mix, maseca/corn husks/dried chilies, etc.

You can drop off holiday items anytime, now through the end of December. If you’d rather make a monetary donation for holiday items, just leave a check in the St. Catherine parish office and make a note “for holiday foods” in the memo line and they’ll go shopping!  Or you can make a monetary donation online on the parish website. (www.stca.org).

Reachout is located onsite at St. Catherine Catholic Church, 17400 Peak Ave., in the building at the back of the property (off Noble Court), open from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Currently, they are receiving quite a bit less from the food bank these days and are purchasing much of what they put in their brown bags — they went from spending $500 a month two years ago, to $5,000-plus a month currently! Second Harvest provides lots of fresh produce, and eggs and milk, but canned food and dry goods and meat are costing them quite a bit to purchase. If you’d like to help, they could use: Ramen noodles, breakfast cereal, and canned goods (tomatoes, fruit, soup, vegetables, chili, beans). Second Harvest will no longer be purchasing meat.  They will provide donated meat, when possible. Reachout is now budgeting an additional $2,000-plus a month going forward to purchase meat for their guests.

If you have the means, please help those in need.