READING, Pa. – Non-profit the Real Deal 610 is following through in the wake of the return of SNAP benefits as they say the need is still great across Berks County.<\/p>\n
“We got an abundance of response,” said Seleda Simmons with The Real Deal 610.<\/p>\n
Berks County once again answered the call.<\/p>\n
“When we first found out that the SNAP benefits were gonna be cut off, we wanted to formulate a preventative strategy,” Simmons said. ” We knew that it was gonna affect a lot of families”.<\/p>\n
Anticipating the need during the government shutdown connected to a delay in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits — non-profit The Real Deal 610 organized a county-wide collection for food and other much needed life-sustaining items<\/p>\n
“We have diapers. We have baby formula. We have food. We have coats. We have clothes,” Simmons said.<\/p>\n
Distribution locations are set up at Tech Centro & The LBGT Center of Greater Reading.<\/p>\n
“The community is looking for help and a lot of the organizations utilized are closed,” said Shaykayaria Del Rio Gonzalez with Tec Centro. “This full effort has been absolutely amazing.”<\/p>\n
With SNAP benefits now being restored to millions, including about 60,000 people in Berks, Simmons with the Real Deal 610 says people still need help.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy that it got back on, even if people that do have their food stamps still need that extra support,” Simmons said.<\/p>\n
She says efforts like these help restore faith in the community, regardless of how divided society seems.<\/p>\n
“I feel so blessed to be able to experience how people can come together. I can’t express that enough. It’s an exuberating feeling,” Simmons said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Non-profit the Real Deal 610 is following through in the wake of the return of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,14657,14658,4611,21579,28,128,130,129,13395,7617],"class_list":["post-34589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-federal-assistance-in-the-united-states","tag-food-security-in-the-united-states","tag-food-stamps","tag-lbgt-center-of-greater-reading","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-seleda-simmons","tag-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34589","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=34589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}