 Over the years, St. Vincent Mission in Floyd County has provided residents in need with an emergency food service with its food pantry. Now the mission is expanding that service with a project now known as growing for our future. St. Vincent Mission has a community garden on site where fruits and vegetables are grown and placed in the food pantry for a wider variety to those in need. However, the program expands to off-site projects as well. We also visit people in their own gardens and farms. We supply as many seeds as people would like and need for their enterprise. And then we act as a support system for them. Organizers stress that most of the time food from the St. Vincent Mission is the only food some residents get. So it's very important to offer a variety of options. Currently, we serve about 90 families a month in this area. Floyd County has a very high poverty rate, one of the highest in the state, and we are very food insecure, especially in the summertime when you have kids out of school and they're not getting those meals. Those at St. Vincent Mission say this is something Appalachians already know. It's just expanding that knowledge. We just try to encourage something that Appalachian people know naturally is how to repurpose instead of becoming such a throwaway society and getting rid of everything. We've tried to turn it to be not handouts but hand up or a helping hand and encourage people to give back. In 2015, St. Vincent Mission provided over 47,000 meals and donated food to over 2700 people. Reporting in David for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.