Promen-Aid offers chance to help

Here’s a chance to help someone you may never meet.

And a chance to feel a little bit better about yourself.

Saturday night, Jay County High School students will be exulting in a special event: Prom.

You can make it even more special by participating in Promen-Aid .

For several years now, employees of The Commercial Review have parked the somewhat battered company van just outside the entrance to the prom festivities.

As parents, families and just about anyone not prom-age lines up to see the students in their finery, those of us by the van will be collecting canned goods, dry food like cereal and personal hygiene products for Helping Hand Food Pantry.

Admission to see the promenade is free, but you’ll feel a little better about yourself if you share the moment with others by making a food pantry donation.

Over the past several weeks, this newspaper has been doing its best to explore the problem of child poverty in our community.

But it’s safe to say that the reporters involved in that project feel we’ve fallen short.

Try though we might, we didn’t succeed in putting a human face on the problem. Statistics and official comments dominated, when the reality of going to bed hungry, the stigma of poverty, the challenge of keeping your kids fed may not have come through.

Why was that? The simple answer is: Pride.

Folks who are having trouble making ends meet, families struggling to get food on the table and pay their bills want to remain anonymous. Poverty carries a measure of shame.

That may not be rational, but it’s true.

And it’s especially true in small towns and rural communities like ours.

There was simply no way to “put a human face on the problem” without making that face identifiable. No measure of journalistic anonymity was enough. People would know who we were writing about.

So, maybe, when we park that battered van out by the high school on Saturday night, we’ll simply be trying to make amends by helping to fill the shelves of the food pantry.

But it’s your chance to make amends as well. It’s your chance to take the message of that long series of articles and turn it into action. Maybe just for one night, but one night is better than none.

Promen-Aid, simply put, is a chance.

It’s a chance to help someone you may never meet.

And it’s also a chance to feel a little bit better about yourself.

See you Saturday. — J.R.