A Year’s Worth of Meat Helps Ensure Hungry Cortez Residents Get the Protein They Need

In Cortez, Colorado, Grace’s Kitchen has been serving meals to those in need—no questions asked—for more than 25 years. Food security has become a more significant issue for Cortez residents in recent years, though, in part due to inflation disproportionately hitting grocery items in rural communities, and the fact that benefits for qualifying families have been cut twice in 18 months. Grace’s Kitchen now serves more than 100 meals, three times per week. Complicating things, area grocery stores don’t have as much product to donate, making it difficult for Grace’s Kitchen to provide the same healthy, protein-rich food options to the Cortez residents who need them. So Grace’s Kitchen volunteers reached out to LOR with solution: Purchase protein to feed Cortez locals in the near-term while staff work to secure stable funding to purchase meat moving forward,. LOR’s funding will support the purchase of enough meat (roughly 3,900 pounds) to support the soup kitchen for a year.