The Community Food Basket supports federal employees for second weekend

The Community Food Basket showed their support to Federal employees affected by the government shutdown during the shutdown.

With the government now reopened, they continued to show their support for the government.

“Even though there is this three week startup for the government that was announced {Friday}, or approved I should say, we still have many days before paychecks will be cut and for people to be able to recover from in a 35-36 days or more of no income,” said Idaho Falls Mayor Rebecca Casper.

Two weekends ago, the canned food give away was a huge success that this last weekend, they were able to give away full-sized cakes while also handing out baby formula and diapers to families in need.

Saturday was intended to be the last for the community food basket to give away food to government employees but due to recent developments that might change.

“Well these two weekends were a result of the mayor’s request for us to open up to federal employees and offer some food,” says Zindel Jackson, a volunteer,” So I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t when an event happens in the future again.”

“We’re offering all kinds of services from baby food to help with bills to food, meat, eggs, breads,” said Ariel Jackson, the Executive Assistant Community Food Basket. ” You kind of get a wide variety of things here that they may be lacking during the shutdown. I know that the government is supposed to start back up on Monday but I know it’s only for a short time I heard and so we will continue to support the effort for as long as need to and do this again, again, and again.”

“Frankly that is one of the lovely things about where we will live,” says Casper, “is that there are organizations like this and there are generous people who support the volunteers that keep them running to be able to provide that kind of insurance safety net if you will for people in our community.”

There aren’t any current plans set just yet on how they will be helping the federal employees.

If the government does re-shut down then they will make an announcement letting the public know how they will be helping out.