What is your name, and what is your role at Helping Hands of Paulding County? 

 

My name is Reva M. Burks, and I'm the executive director here at Helping Hands of Paulding County, and I run the day-to-day operations here 

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Could you briefly describe what Helping Hands is and its overall goal? ​

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Helping Hands is a food pantry, a clothing center, and a resource center for the people of Paulding County, so we open up our doors and allow people here who are food-insecure and secure, who don't know where their next meal is gonna come from. We allow them to come in and get food from us. 

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What inspired you personally to get involved in the fight against food and security? 

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Well, my inspiration come from actually having lived this story some years ago when I was very very young in my 20s out living out in California and I was a little bit too proud to call my parents and tell them that I was struggling a little bit so I went to a food pantry and I think I visited twice And so I know what it feels like to not have know where your next meal is coming from and and I got involved that way, and then the other way is actually meeting the lady who was in the position before me and her telling me exactly what they did here and I just wanted to get involved in and help you know the next person 

 

Could you explain how your food pantry operates day to day? 

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Yes, well, what happens is that when people come here, they get signed up, vetted for participation in our program, and they have to be calling. They have to be called in as county residents first, before they can come here for food, and they have to have proof of that residency. Through a lease agreement or a mortgage document if they own their own home or a utility bill and they have to have a Georgia Georgia ID and they also have to have proof of their household income and if they don't have that then what we asked for is a notarized statement from the person that they're living with because you get a lot of people I say you know I don't have a lease agreement I'm living with You know this particular person and so we'll ask them for a notarized statement from that person to state that they do live with them and verify that they are in Paulding county and there you know taking care of them and so that they would bring in that information we would go ahead and put them in the system. Here we have a system that we use out of. It's actually called Oasis, but we have a system that we put everyone in. They can come to Helping Hands once every 7 days for help. Right now, we distribute food on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, so if they came in tomorrow, they'd have to wait until the following Wednesday to come back for food. Now we get our food from sponsors in the area, and we call those sponsors. They're actually the big, you know, the big stores in the area, and instead of throwing it away, they give it to us, and we're so thankful for that. You know, we're a pretty wasteful company; the country wastes about 41% of the food we have, so instead of wasting it, they call us. And we go ahead, and we give it out to people 

 

What challenges would you say are unique to running a food pantry in Georgia compared to other states? 

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Well, you know, I've never worked at another pantry in another state, but I would just say the challenge here with helping hands is getting people to come in and assist us. You know we need volunteers. Everyone who comes to help here is a volunteer, other than the pantry manager. And the pantry associate that we have, so their volunteer excuse me, they're paid employees as well as myself, but everyone else that comes to help us out, including the drivers, they're all volunteers, so that right there would probably be our biggest challeng,e having enough people every day, five days a week, coming out to assist us 

 

Are there limits on how often a family can visit your pantry? 

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Yes, they can visit once a week but it has to be seven days in between their visits and they can go to our clothing center that is actually based on the inventory that we have there but I think right now it's like every 90 to 120 days and they can get about 20 items per family member There but they can go to the clothing center as well as get the food here so when we put it in the system, it put them in the system then we're looking at it when they come in the following week we look to see when their last visit was or making sure that you know they are coming on the days that they're supposed to or at least it's been seven days since their last visit 

 

How do you how does your pantry assist individuals without transportation? 

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Right now, we don't have a program like that. I would love it. I would love it if we had some kind of program that would deliver food to people we know for sure don't have transportation. I couldn't get here because, you know, people who know where they live don't have transportation. I would love to have a program like that, or have volunteers take the food out to them, but at this time, we do not have one. So I talk to people and ask them to ask their neighbors. Ask their relatives, friends, you know, because they may have. They may know someone who comes here, so I asked them to get in contact with those folks. They help them get out here to Helping Hands. 

 

What types of donations are most helpful for your pantry? 

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We normally have like a list of of items that we take dry goods you know, canned meats, canned vegetables you know the canned meats would be your tuna, your chicken sardines you know anything any meats that come in a can would be good for for people Canned vegetables, canned fruits we also have a need for that your pastas let's see what else pasta sauce Soups, your canned soup those would be good hot cereal, hot you know like you're hot oatmeal hot grits, hot breakfast meals that would be good for anyone that comes here And we'll see what else I have a list of of items here that we normally asked for here, but also you know we we give the families non-food items, toiletry items you know, toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, personal hygiene items if we have Detergent You know a lot of people don't have access to detergent or even Water you know so yeah so any type of those type of items we have for them as well. We do have pet food when we get it. We give out pet food, which could be for cats or dogs. We do have those items that come in as well, so we give them out.

 

What is one thing you wish more people in Georgia understood about food and security? 

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One thing I wish more people understood about it is that it could actually be any one of us at any time. All we need is for one life event to happen, you know, you lose a job, you have a job on Monday, but come Friday, you lose your job. You know, people still have the regular bills they would normally have, but now you may have to decide: do I pay these bills, or do I go buy groceries? You know, we've seen that quite a bit with our seniors and other age groups as well, just to have one thing happen. And you know because of their you know how they're living it's possible that you could become into a food pantry yourself and and we saw that when Covid happened you know people said that they had never been to a food pantry before never knew it existed and had to come out here For to get food so I wish they would know that it could be any one of us. All you need is for one thing to happen to change your life, and you could end up at a food pantry. You know, we don't wanna judge people on why they're coming here. 

 

If you could send one message to people across Georgia about hunger and food 

pantries, what would it be? 

The one message I would send to people about hunger and food pantries here across Georgia would be all it takes is for us one person to do one thing So in order to get involved Just do one thing that may be you know if you come to a food pantry if you see that you're not able to be a driver maybe you might wanna be a case manager or maybe you might wanna work in the food pantry but just do one thing to help somebody out And not be as judgmental about why people have to come to the food pantry So we all need to do something to help the next person out 

     

 

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