Stories and videos from our Charities

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 Here are two touching stories told by Joyce Ellis, executive director of The Lemoyne Center:

One story I’d like to share with you is about a little boy in our Donora site. As we are feeding him, I noticed that he kept coming back periodically to get lunches. Until one day I decided to count, and he had a total of four lunches. Since he was only ten years old, I thought that maybe he was binge eating and I wanted to check with his mom to make sure that it was OK for him to consume this much food. With tears in her eyes she assured me that he was just making sure he had enough in his stomach because when they got home that night there wasn’t much for them to eat. This just broke my heart. 

Another story at our Brownson House site. We had a boy that showed up every day for the lunches. He would not take a lunch, so we tried to convince him it was free, and he kept saying no thank you, no thank you. 

On the third day I said to him “I have some lunches left over. Why don’t you just take these with you and maybe someone in your family can eat them.” We left the site and I had forgotten one of the bags that we carried the lunches in. I circled back and I saw this little boy consuming the food with tears running down his face because he was eating it so fast. I made sure that he didn’t see me and each day I kept making up the same excuse that I had food left over for him. 

These moving stories show the impact that the donations of WOMEN of Southwestern PA have had in helping us to make sure that we (The LeMoyne Center) can make sure food gets into the hands of these needy children.