Page 92 - Cityview May-June 2017

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90 MAY JUNE 2017
NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT
On a typical Tuesday distribution day, volunteers unload the truck, set
up tables, and unpack products. And when it’s time for the residents to come in, they draw numbers for the order in which they are allowed to shop. “We do it totally random so there’s equity for everyone,” Conway says.
There’s no cost to the agency, and there’s no cost to the residents to participate. “It would be a struggle
to provide a duplicate service for our seniors,” Conway says. “I know that they depend on it so desperately at times just to make their budgets stretch.... This partnership is invaluable.”
Feeling Close to Home
The people Streno serves on a daily basis tend to bring back memories. She grew up one of four children in what she calls “a chaotic childhood.” She moved 23 times before she turned 18, and there were many times where she recalls the church, along with extended family, helping her family to make ends meet. And yet while her childhood was anything but easy, the impact this help had on her life made her feel that she had a mission to carry it on.
“It gave me the incentive in my mind that if I ever could give back, I wanted to,” she says.
And that’s what brought her to Second Harvest. Today, 23 years later, she still loves her work and continues to seek innovative solutions to the region’s food access challenges.
“I’m trying to make an impact on even just one person, not just me, but our whole staff,” she says. “We’re trying to change what people have to deal with.”
Conway has watched the impact this organization has had on the seniors she serves and to her it’s making the impact that the community needs. “You go all over the Knoxville area and the outlying areas and Second Harvest is there, touching lives way beyond our little microcosm of what we do,” she says. “It’s a real lifeline to our community.”
Learn more at secondharvestetn.org.
Rebecca Whalen lives and works in New York, where she enjoys life as a new mom and practices yoga as her exercise of choice for both body and mind.