Over the past month Guiding Light Food Services Director Allen Holt has been in talks with representatives from Degage Ministries, a local women’s shelter in Heartside Grand Rapids, about their increased need for food donations. Degagé has recently put into works a plan to start serving more meals for the community, and has been putting out feelers to fellow organizations for support.
On Tuesday March 29th, Allen came through and was able to acquire 3,820 pounds of foodstuffs including fresh vegetables, chicken, beef, coffee, dressings, cereal, bread etc. to stock up Degagé’s food pantries. As the Degagé transport van pulled into the Guiding Light loading dock, April Calver, Food Services Director for Degagé, was taken aback to see several carts loaded full of donated goods that we were able to allocate for them. “We’re going to need to take a few trips, this is such a blessing we’re gonna be eatin’ good at Degagé,” she said.
Allen, who came to the doors of Guiding Light over a year ago to enroll in our Recovery program, has been instrumental over the past year in overhauling our food distribution network to meet the needs of the community. “I came in as a client in June of 2020 and completed the program, and with my background in kitchens and cooking they offered me a job here,” he said. “I didn’t realize it would be more than just cooking. It’s phenomenal what we do and how we feed people because we’re a non-profit. It’s just amazing how God puts all this together and supplies one person or organization and then we have enough to give to the rest of the community. He is proud to be a part of the solution of a problem he had spent much of his life being on the other end of. He’s thankful to God and for Guiding Light’s willingness to take someone like him in and give him the help he needed to get back on his feet. “Being able to give back and to help out other organizations like Degagé is a blessing,” he says.
As an organization Guiding Light is centered at the crossroads of private, non-profit, and community-based entities and is uniquely situated to collaborate and make sure that donated goods of all sorts get into the hands of those that need it most. Guiding Light is but one small part of a vast web of organizational connections, and it wouldn’t be possible to feed our community if we weren’t all working together. It is important to note, also, that none of this would be possible without all the support that Guiding Light receives from all of you. All our tireless and generous donors, advocates, and volunteers, those who invest their spirit into the mission of Guiding Light, you are the ones that make all this possible. From all of us at Guiding Light, we would like to express our deepest gratitude from the bottom of our hearts for making all of this possible. Thank you, and God bless.
