Inter Parish Ministry's new Amelia food pantry is open and ready to serve - WCPO

Inter Parish Ministry's new Amelia food pantry is open and ready to serve - WCPO

NEWTOWN, Ohio -- It was two months to the day after Hank Slone and his wife signed the closing papers to buy their new home when he got the bad news.

The company where Slone had worked for nearly a year had to cut the budget, and his job was being eliminated.

His wife, Rachael, gets disability payments that cover the couple's monthly mortgage and utilities, but they counted on Slone's paycheck to cover everything else. Now unemployment only pays half of what Slone was earning at his old job, which means money has been tight.

"We've been surviving," Slone said. "Not flourishing by any means. But we're doing OK."

That's how the Slones wound up being some of the very first clients at Inter Parish Ministry's new Choice Food Pantry in Amelia. They stopped by the pantry's grand opening and walked up and down the tidy, well-stocked aisles to fill a shopping cart with food they selected for themselves, their 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter.

Inter Parish Ministry's new Amelia location.

"When we went to the cereal part, and they had Frosted Mini Wheats -- that's my son's favorite cereal," Slone said. "When he came home from school that day and I showed him what we got, you can better believe he had a bowl of cereal right there."

With all the energy that community and business leaders are investing to reduce concentrated poverty in our region's inner cities, it's easy to forget that nearly every corner of the Tri-State has neighbors in need.

Eastern Hamilton County and Clermont County have far fewer resources to help those neighbors, however. And that's why Inter Parish Ministry on Oct. 5 opened the new food pantry -- its third location -- in Amelia. Inter Parish Mission's primary location is in Newtown, and it has a Batavia food pantry that's open on Saturday mornings.

"In Clermont County, transportation is very, very difficult for many people. They just can't get to the pantries," said Lindsey Ein, Inter Parish Ministry's executive director. "We think this (new location) will be a blessing to the residents of Clermont County who won't have to drive to Newtown."

More information about Inter Parish Ministry and its new Amelia Choice Food Pantry is available online.

Insiders can read more about the other services and assistance that Inter Parish Ministry provides, what one of the volunteers there had to say about the organization and what Slone thinks the new food pantry will mean for Clermont County.