My name is Carin Duriez and I came today because I need food. Here, this is my first time, but I’ve been going to food banks for about six months now. If I don’t come to these, I have no way of getting food. I don’t have like people to call or like anywhere else to go. I get money every month. I can pay for everything in my house, but I just can’t pay for food.

 

A lot of people don’t come to food distribution places because they feel ashamed about the way people will perceive them, and the way people that they know will judge them, and I feel like there’s nothing wrong with going someplace to get food because you’re hungry. That’s not something that we as Americans should be ashamed about. And like the media and people around us all kind of force that view upon everyone. It’s a very big problem, because then people don’t want to go and receive like help and people die every day from hunger in America. That’s like a reality; it does happen.

 

I dropped out of UC Davis because I was a biology major and I wanted to go on to med school like all other people do, and I decided that what I really wanted to do was be a nurse and to actually get that one-on-one experience. And my family wasn’t very happy about it, because they knew that I would probably struggle a little bit, but it’s something that meant the world to me, so why not go the extra mile?

 

When I first started coming, I felt embarrassed to go to food banks, and then I realized why am I embarrassed? Is it wrong to feel like you want to eat, to like have food in your stomach? Because all my life, I was kind of told that, and it’s always been a shameful thing. But I just got over it, because this is something that it’s not wrong, and people need to get over that.