A food pantry for military veterans opened Thursday, less than a week before Veterans Day, at the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital, officials said.
by Arnaldo Rodgers
It is the second pantry operated by the Greater Chicago Food Depository that specializes in serving the poor and vulnerable former military personnel.
“We know we’ve always served a pretty large population of veterans,” said Angel La Luz, the director of veteran relations with the Food Depository. “There is a certain percentage of veterans accessing our network, but there are some that are not. We thought a better way to serve veterans was through the hospitals that already serve them.”
About 7 percent of the 76,000 Illinois veterans who deployed after 2001 live below the poverty line, statistics show. About 12 percent of veterans in the state are considered low income, according to a 2012 report by the Social Impact Research Center, the research arm of the nonprofit Heartland Alliance.
Currently, 18 percent of the households that go to Food Depository sites for free groceries is a current or former member of the U.S. Armed Forces, the agency’s studies have shown.
The food pantry at Hines aims to offer veterans some help by providing them with bags of fresh apples, oranges, kale and cabbage along with packages of ground turkey, cans of beans, loaves of bread, boxes of macaroni and other food items, La Luz said.
The Food Depository operates a food pantry at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in the West Loop and that location has given food to more than 19,000 families since it opened.
At Hines, near Maywood, on Thursday morning, dozens of veterans lined up to get help, and the pantry expected to serve more than the 100 veterans it had anticipated, La Luz said.
“We expect to continue this program as long as there is a need. We will be here as long as our veterans need us,” La Luz said.
In addition to offering food to veterans, the pantry site helps those, who are eligible, sign up for SNAP benefits. There are also on-site employment resources.
The pantry will be managed by AmeriCorps members and staffed by volunteers and open Thursdays from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.
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