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Visiting ball team pitches in
Community Outreach received a little help this morning from the Chillicothe, Mo., Mudcats baseball team.
Mudcat player Bryce Bisenius said they were, “just doing something to help out.”
The Mudcats spent much of the morning unloading and sorting donations, packing bags of food to be handed out at the community kitchen and moving large items around at Loretta’s Attic.
If you didn’t know differently, it would appear as if they had been helping at Community Outreach for years as they packed 200 meals for the homeless and less fortunate.
Pantry Assistant Sarah Riley said Community Outreach has seen an increase in the number of people the community kitchen is feeding this year.
“School’s out so we have quite a few kids …” Riley said.
The number of people the community kitchen feeds has increased from an average of 40 people each day last year to approximately 60 each day this year.
“We’re seeing some faces we haven’t seen before,” Riley said.
Riley said some of the new faces were people that had moved to town without plans for accommodations or were friends that had moved in with friends.
Director Barbara Long said Community Outreach has provided food for those in need for more than three decades.
“We started in a church closet,” Riley said.
Today, Community Outreach is located at 229 N. Cedar St. and helps those in need through various programs including an emergency food pantry, USDA commodities, the community kitchen, back to school fair, backpacks of love and Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets.
The community kitchen has been in operation for two years and helps feed homeless and struggling families. It is open Monday-Friday from noon to 1 p.m.
According to Community Outreach, the emergency food pantry provides “food assistance to area individuals who, due to a financial hardship, find themselves with no means of providing food for their family.” In these cases, Community Outreach provides about four days of balanced meals.
Each fall, Community Outreach partners with West Central Missouri Community Action Agency, local churches and businesses to purchase school supplies for approximately 300 area students.
Community Outreach relies primarily on volunteers as Riley and Long are the only paid staff members. Aside from the day to day volunteers, according to Long, the last large group of volunteers to help out at Community Outreach was a group of Nevada R-5 teachers this past spring.
Anyone with questions, or are willing to volunteer or donate can contact Community Outreach Director Barbara Long at 417-667-4339.
The Mudcats were in Nevada for a game against the Griffons Thursday evening. When asked who was going to win, several answered in unison, “of course we are!”