The Center Project, the LGTBQ+ community center in Columbia, recently announced a food share — where anyone needing help can come to the Center Project and receive shelf stable foods.
Board member Mel Constantine Miseo spoke about their new food share and how mid-Missouri’s LGBTQ+ community is coming together to keep each other fed this holiday season.
For the month of November, we're focusing on the role that human connection can play in health.
Mel Constantine Miseo: People are definitely worried and feeling stressed. They're definitely feeling it in their wallets of not being able to afford some of their basic needs and struggling a little more.
People generally are grateful for the community that we have, that we can rely on each other and come up with solutions to support each other, even when our government is not able to.
Research shows that LGBTQ people are facing poverty at higher rates — directly related to discrimination and social isolation that are caused by bigotry and fear of difference and misunderstanding, misconceptions and outright hate towards a community that is just trying to survive.
And so, when you're constantly being attacked, discriminated against, fired for being LGBTQ, made to feel uncomfortable for just surviving in the world — it makes it harder to afford your basic needs.
And , of course, if you don't have a job, then you can't pay your bills, afford housing. There's higher rates of homelessness, also, in our community.
About 40% of all homeless youth are LGBTQ, and it stems from not having, yeah, that family support systems to fall back on.
So, it's not an inherent defect or something wrong because you're LGBTQ that's causing people to be experiencing these struggles to afford to live, but it relates back to the social discrimination and rejection that people are facing.
We're looking into continuing having some more food shares in the future, and maybe just having shelf stable food as part of our regular basic needs pantry.
But we, in general, we are really existing as a community center to fight against LGBT discrimination, anti-trans legislation that's causing our community to be more impacted by poverty and food insecurity.
So, that's definitely the bigger picture that we are working towards, and, in the meantime, we are going to do everything we can to support our community with these basic needs resources.
We, as a community center, have people access us who aren't LGBTQ and need basic needs support, of course, we target our resources for the LGBT community, but we do have people who pop by, neighbors who are walking by, people who are experiencing homelessness — who need some extra support. So, it is open for anyone who needs it.
