Sylvia Tisdale believes in feeding the hungry so much that, at 70 years old, she attempted to climb Mount Kiliminjaro to raise awareness about food insecurity.
"The altitude got me," she said with a small chuckle, "but my daughter made it."
Three years later, the pastor at Epps Christian Center in Pensacola, Florida, is still passionate about the work she and her volunteers do to feed the hungry. So when one of those volunteers, Mike Stephens, wrote to his local newspaper to highlight the impact of cuts by the Trump Administration to limit expenditures to food pantries and soup kitchens through the United States Department of Agriculture, she understood why.
"It hits people hard when they come and can’t get as much food," she told USA TODAY, "and it really hurts my volunteers when they have to turn people away."
The USDA announced cuts in March to the Local Food Purchase Assistance program and a similar program, the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement totaling more than $1 billion. Scheduled deliveries of food through the USDA's Emergency Food Assistance Program were halted or cut back.
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