Food items insecurity is a fact even for lots of middle-class households, Plano nonprofit claims

A previous business govt and single mom is amongst the lots of North Texas residents who have experienced their lives overturned by the money fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I am Kristina Hawkins and I am the new confront of hunger,” Hawkins says in a latest video manufactured by Minnie’s Food stuff Pantry.

The Plano nonprofit wrote in a description of the online video that Hawkins’ story reveals how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on families’ livelihoods, “no issue who you are, exactly where you come from, how considerably cash you made in the previous.” Even “middle to upper-class families” have been pressured to rely on meals pantries in the previous yr, in accordance to Minnie’s, which has documented all over the pandemic that it is looking at additional requests for help and much less donations.

In the online video, Hawkins aspects a resume that consists of stints as a vice president at Norwegian Cruise Traces and as a senior director for the restaurant chain TGI Fridays. She explained she was laid off from her corporate career in March of very last yr, obtaining two weeks’ severance pay back.

Hawkins reported she utilized to hundreds of work opportunities and was typically advised that she was overqualified.

“One of the darkest points has been the fact that I come to feel hopeless about the management that I have above my life,” Hawkins reported in the video clip. “I’m at the place the place I could get rid of my home, I could get my auto repossessed. My electrical energy has been shut off quite a few moments.”

Minnie’s Food Pantry furnished Hawkins with funds to go over a few months’ worthy of of car or truck payments and two months of electric power and online company.

Given that recording the video clip, Hawkins has also found gainful work, according to a assertion from the meals pantry.

Hawkins mentioned the encounter experienced been humbling. “You just assume that you would by no means discover by yourself in this place,” she mentioned in the video.

For a lot more data or to learn how to aid, stop by their Minnie’s Foods Pantry on the web.