{"id":19208,"date":"2025-10-30T00:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19208\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T00:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T00:21:08","slug":"local-organizations-step-in-to-help-families-amidst-government-shutdown-allentown-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/19208\/","title":{"rendered":"Local organizations step in to help families amidst government shutdown | Allentown Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) &#8212; Come Saturday, more than 40 million Americans may not get essential food assistance through SNAP. The program relies on government funding and the feds are still under a shutdown.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why two local organizations in Allentown partnered with Americold to donate hundreds of boxes of food to families who need it most.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, Americold, Feed the Children and the Salvation Army teamed up in Allentown to donate hundreds of boxes of food and personal care supplies to local families.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Each family is getting three different boxes that include all kinds of canned food and other food essentials and then also a lot of bath and body products,&#8221; said Rob Chambers, Americold CEO. &#8220;People have been lined up all day. We&#8217;ve had folks walking in, we&#8217;ve had folks driving through. We&#8217;ll go through 1,200 boxes of food. It&#8217;s about $150,000 worth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A line of people wrapped the block as they stocked up on essentials.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we&#8217;ve seen in terms of food inflation, a higher interest rate environment, less benefit and support from the government. It&#8217;s really stretched a lot of people,&#8221; Chambers stated.<\/p>\n<p>Those we spoke with in line told us off camera they were grateful for the food giveaway and that every little bit helps.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m aware with what&#8217;s going to happen on Saturday in regards to SNAP benefits. The Salvation Army is willing and available to help others out,&#8221; said Major Ismael Correa with the Salvation Army Allentown.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Governor Josh Shapiro joined a number of other states in suing the Trump Administration. They&#8217;re calling on the administration to use contingency funds to pay for November SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) &#8212; Come Saturday, more than 40 million Americans may not get essential food assistance through&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-19208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}