My name is Esther Hall and I came to the food bank mainly because near the end of the month we run short of food. So, we have to wait until the food stamp program comes in at the 9th, so we usually kind of hit the food banks for a week and then finally we make it to the 9th.

 

We live on my paycheck, and I only work on the weekends, and my husband and I are full-time students. There is no money after school, books and stuff. But he will be graduating with his culinary degree and I’ll be graduating with my teaching degree, so hopefully that’ll help more.

 

The car we have, it’s a ’91 Camry, and the windows don’t roll down. There is no air conditioning and there is no radio. So, it’s just like a shell, just trying to get us to and from the places. But in the summertime, we had a hard time getting from food bank to food bank because the radiator would always overheat and we just are really hot in the car. So, we’d wait until cooler times. Transportation is a factor for us because of our car, but we get around when we can.

 

My mom had died a few years ago and we were in a shelter. They had taught us to manage our budget and stuff to accommodate what we needed. We graduated their program and put a down payment on a house. It was like okay, this is how we need to start living, because we were just going out all the time and eating and we didn’t think of food banks as for us. But now that our jobs have turned into school, it’s something we have to live with until we can get out with more education.

"We live on my paycheck, and I only work on the weekends, and my husband and I are full-time students. There is no money after school, books and stuff."