In today's very upsetting economy and turnoil all around, it is a welcoming site to volunteer for a group called
People Helping People (PHP), an interfaith community of Christians, Jews, and Muslims who are concerned with the increasing numbers of hungry and homeless people in West Hernando County.
The idea is to feed the hungry with giving them a great deal of dignity and it doesn't matter where you come from, or what your faith is, everyone deserves a hot meal. They now serve every Sunday and the people are greeted by greeters, showed to a table, assigned a server and are served a drink, salad, a hot entree and a dessert. Publix, who should be extremely commended for their help in this, donates all the bread (there has to be at least 200 loaves) plus the cake and pies. They give us enough so that each person takes home two loaves. Publix may be a few cents more on what they charge, but if you see their generous spirit, you would be happy to shop there.
The volunteers come in at 3:00 p.m., we serve from 4-5:30 p.m., and then do the clean-up. Local restaurants donate the hot food and some of the volunteers I believe also cook. We are always looking for restaurants to help us out. Publix just does it every week. A volunteer picks up the donations from them.
They also have a raffle where they give a bag of donated food. Also, certain times they give donations of clothing.
It warms my heart that there is a place in these unfortunate circumstances where an elderly person, a disabled person, a young family, anyone can come and have a hot meal and a conversation and all done with love and dignity. We tend to forget about these people and there are more and more of us having difficulties in this economy.
