“I’m here today because I don’t have a job. I was working, but they didn’t have anything to keep me busy anymore—that was November 29^th. I’m out of money and I need help getting some food,” says Misty.

This is Misty’s first time visiting CAFB’s St. John Community Food Center, but she says she has been visiting other food pantries in the area.

“My boyfriend is in the moving business and this time of year the jobs just dry up. We’re only going to be able to give my landlord $200 this month, because that’s all we have and I don’t know what we’re going to do,” says Misty.

“There are times when ramen noodles is all you have. You eat ramen for a couple of days. It’s cheap and it will fill you up, but you get pretty tired of it,” confesses Misty. “You just have to hope for the best, but without places like this, I don’t know what I would do,” she says.

Thank you, Central Texas, for your comments and for sharing your hunger stories with us.  Here are our choices for the best blog posts of this past year.

Most popular blog post:
Top 10 Myths about SNAP (Food Stamps)

Most delicious social media effort:
Austin Food Bloggers Project

Most popular guest blogger:
Real Stories: How Low is Low?

Most exciting legislative victory:
Passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Most disappointing legislative failure:
Use of future SNAP benefits to pay for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Do you have a favorite CAFB blog post? Is there something you want to see more of in 2011? Let us know in the comments section below.  Have a safe and happy new year. See you in 2011!

Tierra and her three children are new to Austin and will soon be on their own. Her husband is in the army and getting ready to go on deployment to Qatar.

Listen to her story.

For more stories like this, subscribe to our iTunes Podcast. Submit your own story.

This story was submitted through our online Hunger Stories.

By Pamela U. Wilson

Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your children will suffer unless you get it?  Welfare offices call to tell you they have a job for you, but there is no money to get you to work. Questions run through your head: how long will I see my children living in poverty? How long will the cycle of welfare continue?

I was a child living on welfare in the projects with my mom, brothers and sisters. I remember days of no food, clothes and old shoes. I used to see my mom going to trucks for powdered food so that we could eat. To clean our clothes, we had to bend over a tub and wash them by hand, without laundry soap. Our family was often sick with sores, and flies were on us.

The lifestyle of a poor person often comes with loss of pride and of dignity as a human. Poverty is a lifestyle where shame and low self-esteem become a norm. I can remember the terrible conditions families like mine experienced when times were hard.

Imagine if your family lived in extreme poverty: no money for clothes, shoes, medicine, hot water, soap, heat, transportation, hospital visits, or furniture. The beds smell terrible since there are no sheets for the mattresses. The house has a stench of rotten food, milk and old urine. Most of the time food is cooked with old grease. It’s possible that you cannot wash the dishes because the water is cold. The refrigerator doesn’t work and has been broken for weeks. Clothes must be washed out by hand, without warm water.

Perhaps your children go to school wearing smelly, dirty clothes, old shoes, and without school supplies. Your babies have runny noses, open sores, pink eyes, worms, and suffer from malnutrition. The gnats cover the rotten food and trash that you cannot get rid of, since there is nowhere to take it. To see kids living in such poverty, makes me angry.

Now, imagine trying your best to climb out of poverty by begging for help from office-to-office. You circle a few blocks trying to figure out what you will say, until you find out this was the wrong office, and then you have to do it all over again. The county, state or government welfare offices will maybe allocate to your family $75-$250 a month for rent, food and bills. Getting the other necessities for your family is out of the question. Many food banks and clinics are there to help, but there is no way to get there since you don’t have enough money to ride the bus.

Years later, when I started a family of my own, my husband lost his job and we went to the welfare office for help. The state gave our family $259 for the month. This money did not pay all the bills. We had no way to pay for things we needed. We couldn’t use our cars because there was no money for gas. 

Without a steady source of income, food is hard to come by. Sometimes I go home with a can of green beans and old bread, and that is all I can feed my kids. Sometimes our income is so little that we have to ask for help. There are other times I have given my food away to help someone else.

It is still hard waiting for food between pay checks. We have to save money in order to buy gas and get to work. As a diabetic adult, I must take care of what food I can eat being mindful of fats and sugars. When times are tight, I am very grateful for all the food I have received from the Food Bank.

I can understand why people live in shame and despair while living in poverty. Living in this condition has a way to make or break families. Families must get help when they need it, but not lose their dignity as a human beings. My husband and I were fortunately aware that our dignity was the most precious thing we had besides our kids, and our pride remains strong.

Thank you, Pamela, for sharing your story.

Alese Colehour
Communications VISTA

I have the amazing job of collecting hunger stories from our clients, donors, volunteers and staff, and today I’m excited to introduce our newest initiative: podcasting! Podcasts are downloadable audio files you can listen to and stream online.

Our podcasts feature weekly stories from hungry Central Texans. I ask questions like “How has hunger affected your life?” and “Why is the Food Bank important to you?”

Subscribe in iTunes and start listening today! Tell us about your own experience with hunger, and help us spread the message that Hunger Is UNacceptable.

Louis Blase, Catholic Charites, CAFB Partner Agency

Today’s Feature Story: Louis has a passion for cooking Cajun food. He is a Hurricane Katrina evacuee hailing from the heart of New Orleans. (Listen here.)

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