Local charity — Fayette Samaritans — needs your help now

A charity that helps feed down and out Fayette Countians is itself down and out — of food and charitable family items — and needs your help.

The Fayette Samaritans is a 16-year-old non-profit organization that assists local needy persons with food and clothing. As with many organizations in the area, it is facing difficult times.

Its food bank is at an all-time low and volunteers are asking for your help.

Besides canned goods, its needs include toiletries and toilet tissue, feminine products, and diapers in sizes 4, 5, and 6.

The 501(c)3 nonprofit organization began in 1992 with 11 people each contributing $10 each and 11 churches banding together to help out.

Most people who find themselves in a corner financially would turn to a church for help, but churches have neither the staff nor expertise to separate the “good guys” from the “just trying to get something for nothing guys.”

The Fayette Samaritans have the discrimination process down to a fine science. It also keeps in touch with several other similar organizations in the county, and if one of the something for nothing guys tries to pull the wool over their eyes, it immediately informs these organizations whom to be on the lookout for.

So please keep them in mind when you buy groceries this week and take its Top 10 Needs list, found on Page A2 in this issue, along with you.

The charity is located at 125 Hickory Road, beside the Fayetteville Christian Church. It is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. The phone number is 770-719-2707.

St. Matthew 25:40 says, “... Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

[Carolyn Cary, who lives in Fayetteville, is the official historian of Fayette County and served as editor of “The History of Fayette County.” She is a contributing editor for The Citizen.]