Allegheny Elks Lodge's Yellow Glove Project provides free household cleaning supplies and personal hygeine products to clients of the Northside Common Ministries' Community Food Pantry.
SNAP (the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, a.k.a. "food stamps") only covers food. Recipients are not permitted to use their benefits to purchase dish soap, toothpaste, paper towels, laundry detergent, shampoo, toilet paper, personal hygeine products, etc. Institutions like the Pantry exist to cover the shortfalls of the SNAP program.
The Pantry provides both supplemental food and non-food products to its clients free of charge, allocated to its clients based on total weight of product, per household member. Due to the often insufficient ceiling on SNAP food benefits, clients of the Pantry must sometimes still make the difficult choice between enough additional food for their household, or the non-food products which help to ensure Dignity of Self and Dignity of Place. The Yellow Glove Project aims to eliminate the need for that choice by providing Pantry clients with supplemental non-food products above and beyond the Pantry's allocation weigh-ins.
Started in 2016, the Yellow Glove Project works to allow Pantry clients to always be able to opt for additional food for their families. The Lodge procures grant funding and community donations which are used to purchase non-food products to stock the pantry. Approximately every other month, volunteers from Allegheny Elks Lodge meet at the Pantry to pack the non-food products for distribution, in hundreds of overstock re-usable tote bags donated by numerous local companies and organizations. These sturdy bags of non-food product are then given to Pantry clients after checkout, free of charge and exempt from the product weight limit.
100% of every dollar raised by the Yellow Glove Project is used for purchase of the products provided to Pantry clients. All administrative work and labor is provided by unpaid volunteers from Allegheny Elks Lodge, their friends, and their family members. As a 501(c)8 non-profit corporation operating under the Lodge system, all donations to Allegheny Elks Lodge's Yellow Glove Project are tax-deductible per Internal Revenue Code 170(c)(4). We hope that you will join us in helping to continue this valuable program for our Northside neighbors.
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