Jessamine County Food Pantry

The JCFP started about 14 years ago and has been providing assistance to Jessamine County families who are not able to purchase enough food for themselves. We help, on average, a little over 300 families every month.

Many of our clients are retired and are on a fixed income. Others are young families with children who have had some sort of life event that impacts their ability to provide the necessities they need. Every month some of our client families must decide on buying food, or needed medications, or pay the rent or utility bills. Most of our client families only turn to the Food Pantry for a few months, then they are back on their feet and taking care of their own.

One representative person is Judy. She is in her mid 80's and has lived in Jessamine County her whole life. She shares her home with a small but very vocal dog and has a supportive church and group of friends. But she does not have a great enough income to feed even herself.

Another family is made up of two parents and a a preschool age son. Both parents have a mild disability and could not find work. They came to the Food Pantry for about 6 months and then stopped. We did not know what had happened to them until one day I was eating at a local restaurant and saw the husband at work. His face lit up and he came over to me and told me how grateful they were to have had assistance, but grateful also that he had found work that paid well enough they did not need assistance anymore. He even arranged for my family to get the employee discount on our dinner!

There are many more families in the County that need assistance, long or short term. Feeding America estimates that in any given month over 7000 individuals in Jessamine County are eligible for our assistance. The 300+ families we serve only contain about 10% of that total. 90% of the need in Jessamine County is not currently covered.

We want to expand our facility and expand our reach. We hope to expand and renovate the space we now rent so that we can serve more families. Our goal is to serve at least 600 families in a pantry set up as a “Storefront” model by the end of 2016.

It is wrong that any person in Jessamine County should go hungry. We are doing what we can in the space we now have. Won't you give us a helping hand so the most vulnerable, our elderly and our children, can have enough to eat every day.