a loooooot a lot a lot a lot of "free food resources for poor people" are literally just scams. some of them are not scams on purpose but have the ultimate end result of wasting the time and energy of poor people and then end up being an app that shows you google map results for "food bank" after they take your user data. a lot of the food or financial resources lists that circulate on tumblr are just lists of these scam/timewasting destinations put together by people who genuinely and sincerely want to help, have googled up a bunch of results and compiled them, but of course have not personally spent the ten hours it would take to test and see if any of them actually function as advertised.
sometimes the resource in question functions well in one city but has zero to offer anyone in any other location, for whatever reason, and very very often, when you DO find a real organization or lead or opportunity, they will have incredibly limited hours of operation, are not taking new clients and wont tell you when they are taking new clients, and/or have other means-testing that is simply infeasible to complete. i think on average i have to spend 1-10 hours on this timewasting shit to find one good lead for any sort of actual material result, and i am living in a DEEP blue liberal democrat metropolitan area.
we should all keep this in mind when we see fundraising posts on this website for people who are asking for food, medicine, or transportation money. the kneejerk response is to wonder why they simply havent gone to the foodbank. well, as a regular foodbank-goer who lives within walking distance of a food bank, let me tell you. it takes days to recover from a single trip there, and days to prepare for the next trip, due to all of the above. they only let you go once per week, so you have to carry as much as you possibly can back home, and you arent allowed to make multiple trips, and they wont let you take enough of anything other than dry beans to last more than a week anyway. so you cant make multiple trips per week, but you also cant stock up adequately to avoid running out of stuff like dairy and fruit in a couple days. if i was SLIGHTLY more disabled, or had kids, or had a normal job with normal job hours, it would be entirely impossible to go at all.
i could just lie to them and go multiple times a week anyway, and this would qualify as "welfare fraud". when you see accusations of "welfare fraud", keep this in mind also.
if you personally want to post a list of these resources, it behooves you to note for each one in you list whether you have personally used the resource or not, WHEN you did so, WHAT the result was, and WHERE you are located. if you cant vouch for it, go ahead and post the lead anyway, but say so. try to help people triage their list of leads
EDIT: someone points out they dont even let you GO TO A FOOD BANK in the uk without a fucking referral. it's unbelievable. it really is possible to starve in Britain and the United States while the grocery store down the block dumps day-old food into a dumpster and soaks it all in bleach. they do it every single day
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