Letter to the Editor: Compassion in Mount Pleasant
Fighting for food security
To the Editor:
I write you today about a serious problem in our quaint college town. Mount Pleasant and surrounding areas are stricken with poverty. It's the kind of poverty quite like you'd expect your average college student to endure. Most people have a place to live. The homelessness is still relatively close to average. However, when it comes to something called food security, the issue is becoming serious.
That is why the Community Compassion Network Mobile Food Pantries are working hard to fight. The people there are in dire need of your help. They've been doing a great job of keeping things running with what little resources they have, but the success of their mission is teetering on a tipping point. They need volunteers and more donations. The kind of workforce that the student body of Central Michigan University has would be paramount to their operation.
I recently went there to work myself. As you could imagine, when you volunteer with something like this you get many opportunities to talk to many different people about what's going on and what brought them there. I talked to a man that wasn't homeless, but spent most of his money getting his start-up company running and hasn't gotten to a point where he can make a salary yet. I met a single mother of four whose husband left them a few years prior. She has a good job but struggles to feed her children on her own.
I met a man who was homeless. He moved around to different places around town; staying with friends when he could. He lost his property to foreclosure. He said he doesn't usually take much but every little bit to make it through the weekend helps. I was most shocked to meet a student there. Not that she was there only to volunteer, but because she was there for food as well. She felt that volunteering was the least she could do to repay the community.
The people who need food are just like you. You might even know them. They've just never wanted to bring their personal struggles to you.
There is always a lot more going on in the world than you're aware of.
NICOLAS B. RIVERA
Sophomore
