Prairie Opportunity distributes food boxes
Food boxes stacked on top of a fold-up table ready for distribution was the sight in front of Prairie Opportunity Inc. on Wednesday morning.
Prairie Opportunity Inc. is a local non-profit organization that offers several assistance programs to the counties of Choctaw, Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee, Webster, Winston, and Oktibbeha. While some of the aid is funded by the government, such as weatherization and the Emergency Food and Shelter program, other resources are overseen by the agency itself.
On Wednesday morning, members of Prairie Opportunity held a drive-through Christmas food box distribution for the elderly and disabled populations of the community.
“Every year, we try to do some
thing for our clients, especially our elderly and disabled,” Prairie Opportunity assistant to the executive director Debra Austin said. “We did something like this for them last year, but we really wanted to make sure we did something for them this year because of COVID.”
The members of Prairie Opportunity believe that since the elderly and disabled are at a higher risk of the coronavirus, that there should be a food box distribution that is exclusive for that demographic.
“If you look at the research on COVID and who it affects, you’ll see that our elderly and disabled are the highest risks,” Austin said. “Because they always depend on other people to take care of them, (we just want to) bring them food, pick up their medicine, and just take care of them. So, we wanted to make this pandemic easier for them and give them something.”
Crystal Aaron is the Case Manager Supervisor for Prairie Opportunity and she explained what more their organization does other than the food box distribution.
“A few years ago, we started out just serving people in the community who had supplement incomes, who were on disability, who had disabled children or elderly at home, so their incomes are always limited, and we serve those people consistently,” Aaron said. “So, we always have people who come in and out for any assistance, but our elderly and disabled populations are our consistent customers. They come to us about every three months for services.”
Aaron believes that acts like this for the elderly and disabled do more than just help provide their holiday season meal.
“So, what we do around every holiday season is we prepare food boxes, either for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or sometimes both, to just kind of take the burden off of them for the holiday season,” Aaron said. “That way they can supplement some of their income and won’t have to worry about what they’re going to eat for their Thanksgiving or Christmas meal.”
Aaron also said she would much rather do this kind of work any day of the week than sit behind a desk, no matter how cold it is.
Laura Marshall is the executive director of Prairie Opportunity, and she was grateful that her organization had the opportunity to do something like this for the community.
“Based on their income, which is a fixed income, they have their daily living expenses, such as medication, utility bills, PPES, and the cost of those have drastically gone up, so it takes away a big chunk of the monthly benefits that they receive from the federal government,” Marshall said. “I feel that this food will help supplement what they have. It’s very ironic that Christmas is all about giving, and we want to stay in that spirit of giving. Not only do we give food out during the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays, we also do that throughout the year, and we are so grateful of the partners that we give us the donated goods so that we can do this, especially fraternities and organizations from Mississippi State as well as private individuals.”