Kenai Peninsula Food Bank

Struggling with poverty can be a lonely experience. Health, housing, transportation, employment and other factors can be a delicate house of cards. Without resources or a support system, one card slipping out of place can bring it all crashing down.

Project Homeless Connect is a way to help shore up those cards for people in need. People attending the annual service clearinghouse Wednesday at the Soldotna Regional Sports Center found all the threads of the local support net in one place at one time. And it was anything but lonely, with more than 35 organizations and services on offer and more than 50 volunteers ready to help.

Despite what the weather says, the holidays are just around the corner and a number of local businesses are helping make sure there are plenty of holiday meals to go around. At the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank, deliveries of holiday meal packages begin Monday.

Food banks around the country were listed as one of few beneficiaries to ongoing trade disputes stemming from the Trump administration this summer. Part of the president’s farm bailout included more than a billion dollars of purchases of commodities to be distributed to the nation’s food banks. And while the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank has enjoyed some of that bounty, it's not been without its challenges.

The 23rd annual Kenai Peninsula Food Bank soup supper is coming up this weekend. It's the food bank’s biggest event of the year.