According to Harvest Hope Food Bank, 1 in 8 South Carolinians struggle with hunger. Nationwide, South Carolina ranks seventh in the nation for food insecurity.
In 2024, Jennifer Erdin joined her husband, Ben, and son, Josh, at StoryCorps to share what inspired her to join Harvest Hope’s mission to help eliminate food insecurity across the Palmetto State.
TRANSCRIPT:
Josh: How did you decide what job you wanted?
Jennifer: I wanted to do more impactful work for the people around me. And as you know, Buddy, because you've come to my office, I work at a food bank that provides food in the communities around us: neighbors, kids in your school, people in the churches, people in our neighborhoods. It's definitely been a great change for me.
Ben: Was there any particular event or series of events that kind of triggered that change for you?
Jennifer: It actually all started with having Josh in 2018, because I started to kind of think about the sort of legacy we were leaving for him and the things that I wanted to teach him as a kid. And then, you know, Covid hit shortly after he was born. I realized during that time that I wanted to do more. And also, during Covid we lost my dad. And my dad had always been a public servant his entire career. He'd been working probably 40 years in a variety of different jobs, working and helping people. So, he was the final kind of straw, I guess, that caused me to reevaluate what I was doing in life. And it seemed like a really perfect fit. I liked the mission. I liked what they were doing. There's so many wonderful things that this organization can do for the community with continued growth, and I wanted to be a part of that.
Ben: I've certainly seen a shift in you as you moved from your previous positions up to where you are now. I see the joy that you take in what you do.
Jennifer: It is. And I've had, you know, I've met so many amazing people. You know, I've been able to directly see what the work we do has, that...that effect it has on other people. I love telling this story when we bring people into Harvest Hope. It was like my second or third week there, and I went and picked up lunch and I had my Harvest Hope shirt on. And there was a girl at the drive through that asked me if I worked for Harvest Hope. And, you know, always being mindful of, we have so many things at Harvest Hope that people can participate in. And not knowing what, you know, she was asking the question for, I said, “Yes,” you know, “Have you volunteered?” you know, “Does your church work with us?” Just kind of leaving it sort of open ended. And she said that, no, that she lived in a very rural town just outside of here in Columbia, which is, you think about being in the middle of Columbia, where there's all this access to everything, and she lives 25 minutes down the road, and they don't have grocery stores. And it's a very, very poor kind of area. And she said that there had been several life events that had happened that caused her to need to lean on Harvest Hope for food. One being that she had lost her job during Covid, actually. Another that her mother had gotten extremely ill and she had to quit her job to take care of her mom. And then another time where she just needed the services, just that extra little bit of help. She was just so thankful that there was something like this in the community that could help her in those instances. Not those forever times, but those snapshot picture of a time when she just needed that extra help, when she couldn't make ends meet and just needed some food to get her by for a little bit. And, I mean, I just immediately started crying. You know, I'm kind of an emotional person anyway, but I immediately started crying and just knew that I had made the right decision and I was in the right place after hearing her talk. And I thanked her so much and told her that I hope she didn't need us anymore, but that if she ever did, we're right down the street, and we're always happy to be there for her.
