Category Archives: Current Initiative

Dear Friends, You know that feeling after a long, hard day, when you finally kick off your shoes and sit down at your kitchen table, happy to be home but find yourself faced with the never-ending predicament: What to do about dinner? It’s one of life’s forever problems we’re all familiar with. For most of […]

In October, Russell Buckardt came up to me during the First Presbyterian Church Martin Luther King food drive, wanting to fill me in on a gift from the church, the Buckardts, and their IRA.  Pam and Russell are at the age where they are required to take a minimum payout from their IRA. Their financial […]

I’m a senior, and I don’t have a car. While my relatives can take me shopping when they are in town, I really depend on FFGE and the box of food that they bring every week. This week, there was a mix-up, and I didn’t get my box when I was supposed to. I was […]

It is embarrassing, but even with my job and my husband’s work, there are months when there just isn’t enough money to pay the bills. We don’t come to the pantry very often, well, really, probably more times than I realize. But it really helps us stretch the dollars to be able to pay the […]

I arrived from Venezuela where I had been a successful attorney, earning good money to support my family. But the government changed, and they did not want me, or people like me, not just me alone, around. I was arrested, and I was going to go to prison: That’s when I fled to the United […]

We are big on Santa Claus. He’s got movies, TV specials, books and a seemingly endless array of elves preparing toys for the children of the world (and a few grown-ups). But did you know that thelegend of Santa Claus emerged out of stories about a real person? Saint Nicholas was an early Christian bishop […]

On Thanksgiving, we give thanks to God for that which we are thankful: Family and friends, thecomforts of home and food. The Thanksgiving of historic memory was a traditional English harvest festival, probably not the first harvest festival celebrated by Europeans, let alone Indigenous Americans. But it is America’s foundational celebration, in which people of […]

September is Hunger Action Month, proclaimed by Feeding America, the national network ofmore than 200 food banks. They supply food to pantries and feeding programs, providing food tomore than 46 million Americans. It’s a big organization: the second largest charity in the UnitedStates. But its beginnings were much more humble. John van Hengel was a […]

Under the leadership of Phet Lay Haverkos, Todd Haverkos, Chad (Gope) Ratsamy, and Pong Sayasane, Dee-jai Music and Dance Academy is teaming up again with Illinois State Representative Anna Moeller and friends to harvest vegetables at Scotty’s Vegetable Stand for Food for Greater Elgin and other food pantries in the area. Harvested vegetables will be […]

Food for Greater Elgin is enormously grateful for the many businesses that support our mission of providing food security for our neighbors. While we work hard to get the funding support that we need from area businesses, we also work hard to make sure that it is a good giving experience to the companies, too!  […]