Leigh Wilcoxson Photography

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.

~ Mother Teresa 

Some people don’t know this, but I worked a number of years in the non-profit world.  When I was 17, I spent the summer before my senior year of high school volunteering in the basement of a little church in Charlestown, Indiana, which had a clothing and food pantry called “The Hope Center.”  It was my first taste of volunteer work, and my first hands on experience in working with the needy.  That experience really opened my eyes to the needs of the community, and opened my heart to the love of volunteering.

My sophomore through senior year of college, I worked as a student director of the Volunteer Center on our campus. I was responsible for finding and placing college students into volunteer experiences with a wide variety of community organizations in order to further their career goals and for the basic need of getting college kids involved in the community. My boyfriend at the time - who is my husband now - teased me mercilessly because every organization I added to our database became a place where I threw myself into volunteering.   Before I knew it, I was spending every free moment outside of classes at activity centers in nursing homes, painting walls in children’s centers, directing traffic at airshows with the Red Cross, stuffing envelopes at the Cancer Society…the list goes on.  I just didn’t have the heart to say no.

After college and marriage, I worked for two years at the Julien Center in Indianapolis, which is a non-profit agency for women and children of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crisis. I wore a lot of hats there, as does anyone who works for a non-profit agency.  I answered crisis calls, I checked in clients, I worked with volunteers, I did transcription for psychiatrists and filed insurance claims.  But my biggest and most rewarding job was building relationships with people who walked through the door, people who I still think about and wonder about today, almost 12 years later.

After having children, my ability to volunteer came to a screeching halt. I couldn’t drag a baby to a soup kitchen and a toddler would have no patience with me stuffing envelopes or painting walls. I still do some volunteer activities here and there - after all, I spend quite a bit of time with my church - but it’s not to the extent that I used to.  Now I do charity walks and bake sales and make snacks for VBS’ers.  Things are a little different these days.

So when I got an email from a long-time friend asking if I would be willing to travel to Louisville to spend the day volunteering to shoot pictures for Dare to Care, an organization committed to ending hunger in the community, I got excited.  I reeled in grandparents to babysit for the day, cleared my schedule, loaded up my camera bag and trekked 1.5 hours to good old ”Lul-vul” to spend the day with some wonderfully sweet and caring staff members at Dare to Care.

Dare to Care is a non-profit agency serving a number of counties in Kentucky through programs such as Mobile Pantry, Kid’s Cafes and Backpack Buddies, to name a few.  Last year alone, Dare to Care served over 192,000 hungry people - 40,000 of which were children. Think about that for a minute.  A hundred and ninety-two THOUSAND people who needed meals.  And those are just the people who had the ability to show up.

So, it was my honor to be able to spend the day with the Dare to Care staff  shooting pictures at one of their mobile pantries, at their 55,000 square foot warehouse where they store food, and at a Kid’s Cafe that served nutritious meals to some well deserving  - and tremendously cute kids.  And while I am hopeful that I was able to help them out a little with their website and marketing needs, I am thankful for the opportunity to get to know the community and to see so many smiles from people who are benefitting the great works of Dare to Care.

Mobile Pantry:

Dare to Care’s warehouse, staff and volunteers:

Kid’s Cafe:

If you would like to know more about Dare to Care and how you can get involved, either to volunteer, donate money or participate in a fundraiser, click here.  

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
~ Joseph Butler