Joy Junction Faces Urgent Food Need From About 70,000 New Mexicans Seeking Food Assistance Weekly.

Joy Junction Faces Urgent Food Need From About 70,000 New Mexicans Seeking Food Assistance Weekly.

News Release from Jeremy Reynalds at Joy Junction -- www.joyjunction.org 

For more information call 505 400 7145 or email jeremyreynalds@gmail.com

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (ANS-APRIL 16, 2016) -- There’s enough of a hunger problem in New Mexico that the noise you hear sometimes may not be your neighbor trying to start his car. It could be his growling stomach.

According to the New Mexico Association of Food Banks (NMAFB), nearly 70,000 New Mexicans seek food assistance weekly. That’s the equivalent of a city the size of Santa Fe needing emergency assistance every week.

Joy Junction is feeling that need, where the shelter feeds more than 16,000 meals each month between its South Valley facility and Lifeline of Hope mobile feeding trucks.

The shelter is in immediate need of a variety of items including eggs, USDA approved ground beef, cheese, snacks for sack lunches, oatmeal, sugar.

Joy Junction is hoping people will step up as they have done so often during the shelter’s almost 30 year existence.

Joy Junction Founder and CEO Dr. Jeremy Reynalds said, “There are many people whose stomachs would growl a whole lot more without Joy Junction and the generosity of the community, which makes what we do possible.”

The NMAFB said between 30 and 40 percent of the members of households seeking food assistance are children under the age of 18.

Twenty-one percent of the people seeking food assistance in New Mexico are senior citizens.

Sixty-one percent of households report that in the previous year they had to choose between paying utilities or buying food. Of this group, 33 percent reported that they have to make this tough choice every month.

Forty-eight percent of households report having to choose between paying their rent or mortgage or buying food. Nineteen percent of this group are forced to make this choice every month.

For more information visit www.joyjunction.org

Note: If you would like to help support the ASSIST News Service, please go to www.assistnews.net and click on the DONATE button to make your tax-deductible gift (in the US), which will help ABS continue to bring you these important stories. If you prefer a check, please make it out to ASSIST and mail it to: PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609, USA. Thank you.

Photo capions: 1) Illustration from Joy Junction (www.joyjunction.org). 2) Jeremy and Elma Reynalds.

You may republish this or any ANS stories or news releases with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net)