People across Kentucky are taking action to deal with this.

This week, The Healing Place in Louisville launched the Neighbors Food Pantry.

It's a partnership with Dare to Care to help distribute food to those who need it.

Our Kelsey Starks has more on this new initiative.

John Mark Hak and Chandra Justice are both with the Healing Place.

And here to talk a little bit about this new initiative.

HP's Neighbors Pantry.

What spawned this?

We have a commitment to ensure that we're of West Louisville, in addition to being in West Louisville, where we've been located for 35 years.

Nothing brings people together like food.

And we also know that the zip codes in our vicinity are classified as overdose hot zones.

So we have people.

We have neighbors nearby who are in need of our services that need to know that we're there and that our recovery services are available at no cost to client.

So we had the idea to partner with Dare to Care, and they were receptive to that idea.

They've provided us some support and guidance and we're really excited to, unveil and debut the Neighbors Food Pantry.

And this just launched this week.

So tell us about the experience there, just being there and seeing the people in need.

So across both of our campuses in Louisville, we provide out of our kitchens around just under 900,000 meals per year.

And so through that, we also know that there is, food insecurity, right?

And Dare to Care has helped us unveil that too.

They have a lot of a wealth of information.

So with that, we kind of expanded and partnered with them to, just step wider into our community, provide some service in the way that we can to our neighbors.

And the launch was amazing.

We had 60 individual families that we served.

They were very grateful and had lots of questions.

Are you going to be doing this again?

Can we come back?

Absolutely.

You can come back.

Yeah.

And the answer is yes.

This is something that's going to be going on indefinitely.

It is.

It's a it's a permanent commitment that we're making.

And our goal is to create service opportunities for our clients who are on site in packing food boxes and loading them into cars, interacting with neighbors, and then providing that additional bit of food security to folks in the neighborhood.

And we want to make that a permanent part of our operation.

Yeah.

And and now, right now, specifically, I know, with the expiration potentially of the Snap benefits, that's affecting so many people, how is all of this affecting you all to as an organization?

We we as Chandra mentioned, we serve, just under 900,000 meals a day.

And we are reliant on partnerships with our clients through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program, to be able to serve those meals.

And so the potential effect on us is pretty significant.

We haven't experienced it yet, but the clock is ticking, and we're really anxious for the folks in Congress to do their jobs and, and get the government reopened.

Yeah.

And a lot of people may not understand exactly what it is you all do.

So explain what that what that is.

So we offer, help to people who need it.

So, people that are suffering from substance abuse, mental health issues and disorders, even co-occurring, disorders and substance abuse.

So they can come and don't have to have a penny.

They don't have to have an I.D.. They just show up and you can, retain our services for 6 to 9 months, maybe even a year.

Yeah, as long as you need.

Yeah.

And we, we really specialize in partnering with our clients to restore meaningful and productive lives in the wake of alcoholism and addiction, oftentimes homelessness.

And our clients come in the door, oftentimes broken, distanced from their families and their kids mired in addiction and alcoholism.

And nine months later, they leave completely transformed.

We get every day to witness those miracles happen on a daily basis, and it's really no exaggeration.

It's happening every day.

Yeah, it's an incredible services that you all offer free of charge.

And so this neighbor's pantry is kind of a continuation of that because there are no requirements.

It is free for anyone who needs it.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And tell me why that's so important at this, this particular moment in time when we know there are a lot of people who need it.

It's very important to us to, provide things that are not difficult to attain.

Right?

Everything, tends to be, you know, you have to have this or that to get this back in back.

So just like our program, no barriers.

Right?

So we want this to mirror that.

We don't want to, try to help provide this service to the community and where there's a need for food with barriers attached and no strings.

Right.

We just want to be no strings attached.

If you need help, come and we will help.

Yeah.

In the disease of addiction is exacerbated by economic distress.

We know that the data tells us that experience tells us that.

And, the areas where we're located in west Louisville happen to be some of the areas that are in most chronic economic distress because of long time underinvestment and a whole host of other reasons.

And we want to make sure that our neighbors, first and foremost, know of the services that are available to them on a daily basis.

And there's nothing that brings together people like food.

Well, thank you all so much for being here.

We appreciate it very much.

Thanks, Kelsey.

Neighbors pantry is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Back to you.

Thank you so much, Kelsey.

You can find the neighbors Food pantry at the Healing Place women's campus on South 15th Street and Louisville from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

As Kelsey said, they're also in need of volunteers, and you can find out more information on how to get involved on their website, which is the Healing place.org.