Cape Ann Food Pantry
When I was growing up, my family would once a year donate a night, to cooking and serving food at our local food pantry. The Cape Ann Food Pantry is where we always went, located in Gloucester Massachusetts. The sad reality was that food shelters, such as the one my family volunteered at, were becoming increasing more crowded, due to tough economic times.
There are a couple reasons why my family did this. The first being to show us a piece of reality and the tough hardships some people must go through, in-order to eat a meal. I was very lucky and grew up in an upscale rural town, were you never saw homelessness, crime or suffering. Since these social hardships never showed up in our town, we unfortunately perceived the world as not having anything troubling and that everyone was just as fortunate as us. My parents refer to this thinking trend as, the Manchester Essex bubble effect. To combat this, my parents decided to give show us reality through volunteering at the food shelter.
These food pantry visits taught me a lot as a kid. As a child you don’t really understand hunger and homelessness. These experiences showed me first hand and changed who I was. It was shocking to my and completely shattered my view on the world. My perception of the world being a perfect happy place was gone.
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