Comment: Let’s try to help those who need it most
Every year, charities and other organisations up and down the country collect Christmas presents for children who might not otherwise receive anything. This year demand has dramatically increased – due to Covid-19 and families have been plunged into poverty as a result of the pandemic.
St Vincent de Paul (SVP) has come out in recent days saying calls for help this year will be at their highest level in its history and could reach almost 200,000 by the end of December, grim reading.
Many families will face their very first Christmas on benefits, while those who were already below the breadline have sunk even further into poverty.
While some parents were snuggled up along side their children in matching jammies and treat boxes adorning their newly erected glittering Christmas tree for the Toy Show on Friday night, others were steeped in distress wondering how they were going to make Christmas work at all.
Just as new variants emerge and Covid cases rocket, PUP payments have been culled but we are being told to live with the virus, a major retailer has even launched an advertising campaign stating "baubles to last year, Christmas is on," suggesting we can now crack open the champers and get stuck into the mini vol au vents.
Evidence would seem that nothing could be further from the truth.
This week the founder of a local food bank has revealed that it may be forced to close its doors as a result of a lack of funding and donations. However, the demand for the service is higher than ever.
Ashling Lowe who has been running the Meath Food Bank since 2014 has offered assistance a long with her team to approximately 3,500 people in the county since the first lockdown in March 2020 delivering up to twenty hampers a day to families in need at the height of the pandemic. Retired Irish soldiers have even reached out as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads.
With further restrictions putting financial pressure on people from all backgrounds, the food bank is under more pressure than ever with the care home worker inundated with calls and messages from desperate families struggling to make ends meet coming up to Christmas.
Speaking about the pressures on the community “life line” she said: “I'm holding on to it with death's grip by fingernails at the minute, I am hoping that there is somebody out there who can help us keep going.
“At the moment I have 82 hampers and counting to go out at Christmas and that figure will probably rise into the hundreds, it has been a tough year for everyone.
“I have so many people who are ashamed ringing, the first thing you are met with is somebody breathless that you can't even understand on the phone and that is heartbreaking because these are people who have worked their whole lives who have never had to ask for anything but when you get so desperate and you have nothing left in your press to feed your kids, you'll do anything.”
The pandemic has scarred us, it has taken away our livelihoods, separated us from loved ones and deprived us of saying goodbye to family members. It has made us afraid and it has taken our freedom. But it also brought out the best in humanity, we rallied around the most vulnerable among us and made sure no one was left behind.
As we go into an uncertain future, let us not forget those kind gestures we so willingly handed out during the peak of the pandemic. So maybe if you have anything at all to spare, think of giving it to those who are still trying to get on their feet.
- First appeared as Leader Comment in 11/12/21 edition of Meath Chronicle