The River Hills/Lake Wylie Lions Club in South Carolina recently presented a grant to the Clover Area Assistance Center, as one of over thirty organizations supported by the club annually.

 

The Clover Area Assistance Center operates a Full Choice Pantry, meaning that those in need shop directly from the pantry shelves. Each person is assisted by a volunteer and given a list to shop with.

 

They also provide financial assistance, generally for help with utility bills, rent, prescriptions, the purchase of heating fuels, transportation, and a variety of other basic needs costs, providing over $120,000 on direct financial assistance alone, last year.

 

Executive Director, Cameron Hurst upon receipt of the funds, mentioned “The increase in working families needing help has increased dramatically in our service area. Many of these working families are in entry level jobs whereby they can’t meet these needs on their own. It’s not the non-working families that many believe are the recipients.” She further stated that “The Lions Club Charities has helped us to expand to meet the growing needs of the area and to open our new administration building that we can offer to several agencies to use that features additional office space and a conference room. Up until now, for most of them, the nearest area was Rock Hill.”

 

The CAAC board president, Jerry Epping, also commented, saying “There has been an increase of families and sizes of families. Further noticeable an increase in young families. Much of that is because of cutbacks in the SNAP program and an ever-increasing population in the district.” He further stated, “the demand has grown from once seemed to be mostly senior citizens who were in need.”