December 12, 2025 • 30 mins
One in seven children in Virginia are experiencing hunger and it isn't their fault. The guest on this episode grew up in Virginia in a home that needed support, not only for food insecurity, meaning countless hours of aching hunger, but also support for financial and mental health struggles. Elizabeth Ford left her highly successful career in IT to found Better A Life, a charity in Loudoun County aiming to create a brighter future for children and families, breaking the cycle of poverty and fostering a society where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. One in seven children in Virginia and seeing
hunger and it is not their fault. The guest on
this episode grew up in Virginia in a home that
needed support not only for food and security, meaning countless
hours of aching hunger, but also support for financial and
(00:24):
mental health struggles. Elizabeth Ford left her highly successful career
in It to found Better a Life, a charity in
Loudon County aiming to create a brighter future for children
and families, breaking the cycle of poverty and fostering a
society where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Welcome to the show, miss Ford. I'm so glad you
could make time for us today and talk about all
(00:46):
the great things that you're doing there in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Oh well, thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So let's start by why don't you give us a
little background about your organization and tell us where in
the Commonwealth you.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Are so look back on about our organizations. We started
in twenty sixteen, and I started it by paying off
student lunch debt. At that time, there was some rules
around Louden County, which is where headquarters are based out
of Loladen County, Virginia, where at that time, it was
two lunch counts past two and they weren't supposed to
(01:18):
receive another hot meal until that account balance was paid.
So they would receive like a nut butter bag sandwich
from the back and they would get a little red sticker.
I called it the sticker of shames, and they needed
lunch money and they had to wear that for the
rest of the day. So my goal was to eliminate
that and help eliminate that debt so that the children
(01:38):
could eat every day and not have to worry about
their next meal. That has since changed, which is great,
so they don't have that rule anymore. But that's how
we started, and then slowly from there we moved into
our food pantry and set up our three fold programs,
which is feeding, education, and life skill mentoring.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well that sounds all, yeah, that the sticker thing sounds
like the scarlet letter, like, yes, is awful we do
that to children?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, okay, I don't understand it yet, but they did.
And you know, the kids went home with this all
day long, so everybody knew and you can imagine teenagers
are not going to want that sticker, so they went
without the most.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right right, Oh gosh, that's awful. So that it started
with lunch money. Now, what what do you guys do
as a lot of programs? Now right? Why don't we
talk about that?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes, we have a threefold program. So our first program
is growth for a Life, and that is our base program.
You can't study when you're angry, you can't even focus
when you're when you haven't eaten, and so food is
the band aid. So we supply we have a open
food pantry and to locate well, we have a food
(02:49):
pantry in our Personval, Virginia location, and then we have
a drive up pantry in Reston, Virginia where we bring
food every week and families can come and get food
there at the Kathy Hudgens Community Center where we partner
with the county to use that space. And so we
also in conjunction with that, we go to the schools.
(03:10):
So we have a couple of local schools elementary through
high school where we bring brown bag lunches so that
they can give these lunches to the children to take
home either after school that day for the weekend just
to help replace that meal that they won't typically have.
Oh wow, and yeah, So that's that program. We do
about almost four hundred a month of the lunch bags alone,
(03:34):
and that doesn't include all the food that goes out.
I'd say we do a couple of thousand pounds of
food every two weeks, so it's almost i would say
about eight to ten thousand pounds of food a month
that goes out of the pantry in Loudon County and
Fairfax County. And then so that's that program, very busy one.
(03:57):
Our next program is my favorite. It's called Inspire a
Light Well, I think they're all my favorite, actually, but
Inspire our life program is our education program. So a
lot of the children go home to parents that are
not present, parents that are not home. Parents may not
be able to speak English or read English very well.
And so we have a homework club where they can
(04:17):
come here every Tuesday and they get homework assistants. They
have high school mentors that come in that are from
the Honor program and they help mentor them and help
them with their homework. And then we have the police
department here as well, and so the Personville Police department
has been instrumental in making this program successful. They are
incredible and when they come in, their lights are off,
(04:38):
and most of these kids are used to seeing lights on.
So for about that first year when we open this
program up, there was limited discussion between the children and
the police because they were intimidated. And now when the
police come in, they get frisks for stickers, so it's
actually the opposite role. And so the children love them.
They serve the children food, they mentor them as well,
(05:00):
just gives them a place of safety, security and assistance.
We've had. We just had our second one through the
program go to college, first generation and so she was
actually studying. She started August twenty seven. She's studying to
be an el teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Oh wow, that's what.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
She wants to do. Yeah. Our other one, I got
the first one. He went military. So we were super
proud of you know what we're seeing happen. It takes
years because they start with us very little. So like
this young lady was with us for the past four
five years before she went to college. So we're seeing
the change in these children and helping to just break
(05:38):
that generational poverty through that program. And then and of
course it comes to the hot dinner. Everything we do
comes with food, so we do anything from Chick fil
a pizza to Mediterranean Chinese. We try to open up
that harit, that open up their eyes to see there's
so many different things that they could have.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Oh yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And then we do that one and then our next
one is our final one is Cooked for a Life.
Again another favorite and Cook for a Life is our
cooking classes. And so one of the things that happened
to me i was a child of hunger, was I
never knew how to cook. So at twenty one, when
I'm out on my own and I'm pregnant with my
(06:20):
first child, I'm like, I've got to figure out how
to cook for this kid. I have no idea what
I'm doing, and and you know, it just daunto me
that there's so many other children in that same situation
where they're going home and there's not a parent there,
and how do you learn to cook and how do
you learn to take care of yourself? So we teach
them how to make everything. We're actually going to start
a canned chicken challenge in January on social to let
(06:44):
people see how these kids make different things from canned
chicken and what can they do. And we have literally
first graders making homemade chicken nugget from caned chicken now.
But they've also learned smash burgers and how to make
ramen and all sorts of different things here in this
class to help and be self sufficient so when they
are at home by themselves, they don't have to find
(07:04):
food in the wrong places. They can actually be safe
at home.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I love that. I love that I got lucky. I
was not really a latch key kid. Everybody that I
knew was, but my mom was a latch key kid
when it wasn't common, and so she didn't want to
do that to us when I was little. She was
a stay at home mom. But yeah, I think it's
really important. You know, when you have these kids and
(07:29):
they're on their own and you do get hungry, you
do want a snack. You need that snack to be
able to focus on your homework and to be able
to know how to do that and to do it
safely and nutritiously too, because it's easy to grab a
little Debbie or a Hostess cake, you know, and that's
not always what you really need. I love that. So
(07:52):
this comes from from a place of experience all of this.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Oh yes, yeah, all of my programs are based on
how myself and my friends grew up. We all grew
up pretty much the same way, you know, in the
community of low income. I was in Section eat housing
it's not always called Section eight back then, and I
was with a single mom. My mom, bless her heart
in heaven. She was, you know, had a lot of
(08:18):
depression and a lot of mental health issues that I
didn't realize what it was as a child. I do
know now, and you know, I understand she tried her best,
but she was unable. And so I went to school
without eating because she didn't do the freelanch applications. And
so I know what it's like to tell people you're
on a diet because you're just hungry and you're too
embarrassed to say something. And so how I would supplement
(08:41):
is I actually would hang out at seven to eleven
with my friends and we would ask for quarters. We
called it bumming quarters, and we ate seven eleven hot dogs, pizza,
whatever we could get from the quarters that we got
that day. And that's how I ate versus eating at school.
And so that turned into a lot of anger as
a kid, really resentful, ended up getting kicked out of
(09:02):
middle school high school, became a high school dropout, actually
in the ninth grade, and I was just over it.
My mom was over it. Of course, she signed me
out and I went out and started waitressing, or actually
I was a hostess because I wasn't eighteen yet, and
then I went into waitressing once I turned eighteen. But
I started out hosting at Chile, so I do double
(09:24):
shifts so I could get a free meal, because if
you work in double you got a full free meal
versus fifty percent off. And you know, I figured I
would find a way to get out of it and
you know, make it successful. I wanted to be like
the women that came to seve eleven that gave us
the quarters, and they always looked looked so nice, and
their hair was clean and they smelled so good. And
I definitely was not. I was the opposite of that.
(09:45):
And I said, that's what I want, and I'll figure
out a way to get there. I love that.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And let's talk about that for a minute, because I
know what the United Way, the interviews I've done with them,
they have their Alice program. And I don't know if
you're familiar, but it's basically it means asked that limited
income constrained, but employed. And it's that group of people
who they you know, working things like waitressing. Maybe maybe
(10:12):
they're a you know, working in a police department. Maybe
they're not the officer, but maybe they're a secretary or
something like that, right, and they make what is most
people would consider a decent living. They go to work
every day, they don't seem to be having trouble, but
they make too much money to get assistants like food
stamps or you know those things, but they don't make
(10:34):
enough money to actually pay those bills and have food
in the pantry. And you know, all that kind of stuff.
And what you're saying was it may have even been
that those women in that group who were given you quarters.
Like That's one of the things about hunger is I'm
sure your mom, you know, to the world, was a
very successful woman. I mean, she held out a job,
(10:57):
she raised a child, I mean maybe children. You know,
there's so many things that happened behind closed doors in
families that we just don't know about, and people are
ashamed to share it. Yeah, and it's sad to think
about it like that, because you can't help people if
they don't share it, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, no, that's exactly actually what happened to me. My
first marriage was a marriage of physical abuse, unfortunately, and
that was ten years and when I finally became free
from that, I was making a decent living. I was
making a decent salary, but not enough to take care
of four children on my own daycare any of that.
(11:41):
And so when I went for help, I was actually
five dollars over the limit, and because that five dollars,
I couldn't get assistance that I really needed. And so
at our pantry, we actually don't check income because of that.
I know what it's like to make that five dollars
over where you're making a decent income but not enough
and you still need help, And so we make sure
(12:04):
that we help everyone.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, I love that. I've actually also been a part
of that where I made just over the limit and
still desperately needed the help. You know, it was told, well,
I'm sorry, you don't qualify, you know, and you just struggle,
and and I think there have been times, I know
there's been times where I didn't eat so that my
kids could, you know, and even when they could, it
(12:29):
wasn't as much as they.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Would have wanted.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know, there's just tough times and and we hide
those things. And I don't understand. I don't fully understand.
Why how do you get people past those stigmas so
that they understand you have these programs and that it
can help them.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So I talked to them. You know, we do a
lot of I do a lot of one on one conversations.
A lot of people will cool before they'll come in
and and ask because it's your you know, when you're
behind a screen sometimes to explain without somebody knowing who
you are. I do private appointments for people that are
really embarrassed. So I'll do it. You know, we close
(13:11):
at three. I let them come in at three thirty
four o'clock when they know no one's going to be here,
to do shopping comfortably, to make them feel more comfortable
to come here, because I don't want anyone to.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
One should suffer, right, and it's right, and so it's
it's rough, and so we do things like that a
lot to help them. During the government shutdown, for example,
that just happened, I set up Thursdays just for government employees,
and so they knew if they came in they were
(13:44):
only seeing other government employees that were furloughed. They were
not alone.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Wow, And that's what I think everybody needs. And you're,
you know, like I said, you have personal experience. And
I see you getting emotional, and I'm going to be
right there with you because you know, I've seen we're
going to talk about Christmas now because it's coming up
on that, and i know your organization is doing a lot,
but I see all these stories about organizations like yours.
(14:10):
And there was a year when my youngest was right
at the cusp of still believing but about to be
not and you know what I mean, not gonna say
more than that, And that particular Christmas, my marriage at
the time was falling apart, and he had said, oh,
I'm going to budget money, and he didn't, and we
(14:31):
had literally nothing. Christmas morning. My kids got up and
they were like, and it's not like we've ever had
big Christmases anyway, but to get up and to literally
not have anything to give them, and for that to
be how your child learns something that you weren't really
(14:51):
wanting to teach them.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
That's why organizations like yours and other people mean so
much to me, especially birthdays, Christmas, those special occasions because
you especially, you go back to school and everybody's like,
what you get? Yeah, my kids didn't have. They couldn't
say anything other than what my parents got them, you know,
and that wasn't much either, And it was like, you know,
(15:17):
I just felt like the way it felt like I
had failed, you know. Yeah, And I know I didn't,
you know, but at that moment, it was really hard.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, So why don't we.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Talk about the ways that you're helping families not feel
that way?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, at Christmas time, we have uh, well, we offer
Christmas meals, so every family gets a Christmas meal, whether
it's a hammer turkey, based on what they eat. Not
everybody eats pork, so we offer both. We do have
some families that do just holler meat, so we have
gift cards for them so that they can go get
(15:53):
the meat that they'll eat. So that way we make
sure everybody has the opportunity to eat a meal that
they can eat, and then they pre sign up online.
Our sign up actually was full by the first week
of November. It went that fast. This year. Yeah, I
opened it in October and it was full very quickly,
(16:14):
and so we had eight hundred children that we opened
spots for and by the first week of November we
were full. And we have a weight list right now
to see if we get more, then I can cool
them in and take them off that weight list, and
then I refer them to places that I know have
toys as well well, if I can find it. A
lot of them are closed. But what we do is
we do something called a Child's Wish and it's a
(16:37):
Christmas tree that we put up in our pantry every year,
and the children that are in our weekly homework club
program or our cooking classes, the ones we interact with
that we had that relationship with and we're mentoring, we
put them on our Christmas tree and so they get
a homelyad little wooden ornament with their picture in it,
(16:57):
and they get to keep this ornament after it comes
back to us. On the back of the ornament it
has their first name, their age, and what their Christmas wishes,
and then we put that on the tree for people
to come in and be able to take a tag
off and fill that wish for that child. So we
have had every tag taken off this year, so every
child that had their Christmas wish up there has been
(17:19):
their Christmas wishes come true. And so we make sure
that they get their their Christmas wish. And then all
the other children that we may not know personally, we
have gifts based on their age. So when they register,
they let us know, you know, girl boy gift age
of the child, so that we can give them a
age appropriate gift or gifts. If we have enough. We
(17:40):
like to do two or three per child so that
each child can have that gift. And we do things
like curling irons for teenagers, and you know, I put
out a few some of the teens wanted ug shoes
and you know those things that for teenager it's like,
you know, this is it right, Everybody's gonna look at me,
and so so I specifically put those kind of things
(18:02):
out there. Nike socks that Nike socks are huge, and
they're not you know, twenty bucks are buy one, get
one fifty percent off at Dicks. But to them, it's
not something they can afford. And so we just try
to help them feel like everybody else they can feel
like they're friends and go back to school and be like, yeah,
I got my Nike socks too, right, and maybe one
of the very few things. But they now feel like
(18:24):
they fit in, and we want to make sure that
they have that confidence, but they also have that blessing
at Christmas to get something they never thought they would get.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And the thing I like to tell
my kids about stuff like that is, you know, right now,
Champion is the brand, right that used to be the
Walmart brand. When I was a kid. That was the
cheap stuff. That was the stuff that you were embarrassed
to wear, and now everybody's wearing it with pride. So
it's like one of those things you're like, you know,
I will buy you these, you know, twenty dollars socks,
(18:55):
but you need to understand, you know, lifetime, you may
see this turn into what the poor people.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Wear, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I love that, And so when did you decide to
start giving the gift cards out? I love that because
my son in law, he's from a Muslim family and
Indian family, and they only eat the whole all stuff.
And you know, I love that because you know, people
forget you know, yeah, we kind of get in our
little world and we think that everybody eats what we eat,
(19:28):
and that's not always the case. So how long have
you been doing that, you know, making sure to accommodate everybody?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh goodness, since I opened the pantry, which was in
twenty twenty, well was the end of twenty twenty, so
twenty twenty one. Immediately we had families from you know,
every background coming in eating food, and I realized quickly
I was like, okay, well what do you eat? It
was a learning lesson for me because there was a
(19:56):
lot of foods I've never even seen and heard of
or understand. I didn't understand hollimeede at that time because
I left an IT job to come do this. So
it and hollomeen are two completely different things. Yeah, and
so so I had to ask a lot of questions,
understand them, get to know them again. I try to
(20:19):
meet every client that comes in because I just think
it's important, you know, that we humanize ourselves, that we
you know that they know that they're loved, they know
that they're cared for, they know that they're not forgotten,
and they're not just a name that walks in. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Definitely, have you given a thought to like in the
summer months, like maybe a small planting farming type thing
where people can grow their own food so they can
learn how to do those things for themselves.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So we actually do teach that to the children. We
have hydro gardens in here because we don't have guardian space.
I actually have two little standing gardens in the front
of our window. Here. We're in a retail area, but
we have drove gardens and so right now there are
cherry tomatoes and basil and jalapeno was on there. They
wanted a salsa garden, and so they'll use that and
(21:10):
they eat from that and they're cooking classes. And I
do that to show them they don't need dirt, right
they A lot of these kids have places that don't
even have patios, and so if you don't have the space,
you can still grow in your house. I showed them
how to regrow green onions from a paper cup and
water and you stick it in there and it regrows.
(21:31):
So you don't actually need anything special because a lot
of people think, well, I need the equipment, I can't
afford the equipment. No, you can use a paper cup
with water and regrow your green onions.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, I had a coworker give me a pepper plant
probably two years ago now, and it was right at
the end of the season. And we in an apartment
and we do have a patio, but I mean, you
can't put it out there in the winter, you know.
So we set up a grow light on the top
of my dryer, my front loader, and it's been there
(22:03):
for two years. And that pepper plant has produced probably
thirty to forty other pepper plants that we've given away
that we've also you know, put out when it was summertime,
put out in the patio and gotten peppers from and
it's still in there, still growing. I mean, you know,
when you don't have seasons to deal with those things
can be pretty resilient. And I love that because, like
(22:24):
you said, not everybody has a patio, but you can
get a grow lighte and you can grow certain things,
you know, as long as you make space for it,
you can grow them in your house. It's amazing. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Where are your.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Needs right now? Are you set as far as most
of your Christmas programs or any of your other programs.
Do you need things?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
We do, so we do need gift cards still for
some of the other you know, the Holly Meet gift cards.
We still need. We are still raising funds to every
child gets a brown bag meal when they come here
for Christmas, so they get a meal to have, you know,
for their weekend because it's it's the holiday week now.
(23:08):
Schools closed, you know, during the Christmas holiday. So we'll
be giving out eight hundred of those. Each bag is
six dollars and twenty five cents. So we're raising five
thousand dollars to meet that need, which will all go
out on December twentieth for our holiday giving day. So
we're still working on that need. We still need toys
because I would love to accommodate the families that are
(23:29):
on the weight list and anywhere from elementary, middle to
high school. All three ranges are on the wait list.
The largest range that's on the weight list, I would
say is between nine and thirteen years old.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
We always need the kids, isn't it it is?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I don't understand that it is. Yeah, well, I think
what a lot of it is is the smaller children.
Their gifts are a lot cheaper, Like you can get
a big bag of Legos and you know, for five dollars,
and the little kid toys tend to be a little
bit cheaper. The older kids items are a little bit
more expensive. So even a Starbucks gift card or a
(24:09):
Chick fil A gift card for a preteen or a
teenager is a great idea, A tendo, a gift card. Yeah,
they would be extremely grateful for those, So any of
those kind of things, because a lot of the teenager stuff,
as you know, you go and buy a hoodie nowadays,
and it's like, you know, forty bucks, But a Chick
fil A gift card you can do for ten dollars.
They can get a meal and a gift right right.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I love that. I love that. Okay, So if people
are hearing this and they want to support what you're doing,
how do they go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And they can either our addresses on our site, we
have a donate spot on our website www dot betterlife
dot org. Or they're welcome to drop off gifts at
our location. We in Percival is where we're collecting all
of the gifts because and rest, and we will be
giving them out in the parking lot again this year
(25:03):
since we don't have an actual site there yet. So
we're at two oh one North Maple Avenue Unit Fison
frank in Perceville, and they're welcome to drop them off
here or send them. We also do have an Amazon
wish Lifts wish list. I apologize on our website and
(25:23):
on our social media that they could just click by
gift and it'll come straight to us.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I love that. That's so smart, what a great idea.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
So, if you had to speculate, what do you think
your kids think of what you do? I mean, do
you think they get it? Do you think they're going
to follow on your footsteps?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
They're all doing different things. I don't know. I think
they will volunteer later on in life. I know one
of my younger ones, one of my fifteen year old
twin boys, he's got a heart of gold and he'll
tear up heart. He'll tear up every time that he's
at an event where I'm helping children and they ask
(26:05):
about me and ask my why, and it just breaks
his heart to hear anyone hungry. And I think he
started he was around eight when he had made an
allowance one day and he brought it to me and
he was crying and he's like, Mom, can you just
give this to the kids. Wow. So they do see it,
and it's definitely in their hearts and on their hearts,
(26:28):
and they love it. They love what we do, what
I do, and they volunteer with me or they're volunteered
some days too, but they volunteer quite frequently on their
own and they love it. And they'll bring their friends
to volunteer as well with them, so that they do
enjoy it. And they love Christmas. They dress up for Christmas.
I'm one of my other twins. He'll be the Grinch,
(26:50):
He's the Grinch every Christmas. My husband he's the Elf
every Christmas. So they enjoy, They enjoy be getting involved
like that and having a lot of fun with the kids.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I love that. I think that's one of those things
that as a society, were so much about convenience, and
it's so much easier to just give somebody else money
and let them handle things. But I think that you
can't really understand and can't really appreciate what you have
until you step out of your bubble and go down
(27:22):
and meet other people outside of your circle who you
would have never met otherwise, and have conversations like what
you and I are having, where you really talk about
each person's truth, you know, And I love that you're
teaching your kids to do that. And I hope and
I pray that that from each of them spreads to
(27:43):
you know, five more in each of their circles, who
then spread it to five more and so forth and
so on.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
To change generations, you know, break that generational poverty, change generations,
because they all deserve the same opportunity everybody else has.
And so that's that's the goal. And we had Volunteering
is huge. We also have lots of volunteer opportunities. We
had one gentleman volunteer a few weeks ago during our
(28:12):
homework club and the children at the end of the
homework club, they ask if they can go shopping so
they can bring home groceries to their family. And there
was a Oh, he was around eight years old and
he typically did shopping, and so he went and he
did his normal shopping after the homework club. And the
man that came to volunteer that night, he left choked up.
(28:33):
I could barely speak because it just until you see
him eight year old goose shopping for his family, you
don't know how it affects you. Yeah, and it's intense.
It's intense, and you know, every day it breaks my heart,
but every day it also warms my heart knowing that
they don't have to suffer and they don't have to
worry about food exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
You did your part each day. You've done your part.
That's awesome. I love that and I hate it because
we're now at the end of our time.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I told you so.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's better Alife dot org, right, and you can find
out everything you need to know there. Sign up for programs,
sign up to volunteer, nowhere to don't, where to go
to donate. All that kind of stuff's all on bettera
Live dot org. Yes, ma'am, Okay, I really do appreciate
you making time for me today. I know it was
kind of last a minute, but it has been such
(29:26):
a blessing, and I hope that this conversation will be
a blessing to so many other people too.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Likewise, Likewise, you're amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under Podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News Network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. One in seven children in Virginia and seeing
hunger and it is not their fault. The guest on
this episode grew up in Virginia in a home that
needed support not only for food and security, meaning countless
hours of aching hunger, but also support for financial and
(00:24):
mental health struggles. Elizabeth Ford left her highly successful career
in It to found Better a Life, a charity in
Loudon County aiming to create a brighter future for children
and families, breaking the cycle of poverty and fostering a
society where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Welcome to the show, miss Ford. I'm so glad you
could make time for us today and talk about all
(00:46):
the great things that you're doing there in Virginia.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Oh well, thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So let's start by why don't you give us a
little background about your organization and tell us where in
the Commonwealth you.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Are so look back on about our organizations. We started
in twenty sixteen, and I started it by paying off
student lunch debt. At that time, there was some rules
around Louden County, which is where headquarters are based out
of Loladen County, Virginia, where at that time, it was
two lunch counts past two and they weren't supposed to
(01:18):
receive another hot meal until that account balance was paid.
So they would receive like a nut butter bag sandwich
from the back and they would get a little red sticker.
I called it the sticker of shames, and they needed
lunch money and they had to wear that for the
rest of the day. So my goal was to eliminate
that and help eliminate that debt so that the children
(01:38):
could eat every day and not have to worry about
their next meal. That has since changed, which is great,
so they don't have that rule anymore. But that's how
we started, and then slowly from there we moved into
our food pantry and set up our three fold programs,
which is feeding, education, and life skill mentoring.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well that sounds all, yeah, that the sticker thing sounds
like the scarlet letter, like, yes, is awful we do
that to children?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, okay, I don't understand it yet, but they did.
And you know, the kids went home with this all
day long, so everybody knew and you can imagine teenagers
are not going to want that sticker, so they went
without the most.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right right, Oh gosh, that's awful. So that it started
with lunch money. Now, what what do you guys do
as a lot of programs? Now right? Why don't we
talk about that?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes, we have a threefold program. So our first program
is growth for a Life, and that is our base program.
You can't study when you're angry, you can't even focus
when you're when you haven't eaten, and so food is
the band aid. So we supply we have a open
food pantry and to locate well, we have a food
(02:49):
pantry in our Personval, Virginia location, and then we have
a drive up pantry in Reston, Virginia where we bring
food every week and families can come and get food
there at the Kathy Hudgens Community Center where we partner
with the county to use that space. And so we
also in conjunction with that, we go to the schools.
(03:10):
So we have a couple of local schools elementary through
high school where we bring brown bag lunches so that
they can give these lunches to the children to take
home either after school that day for the weekend just
to help replace that meal that they won't typically have.
Oh wow, and yeah, So that's that program. We do
about almost four hundred a month of the lunch bags alone,
(03:34):
and that doesn't include all the food that goes out.
I'd say we do a couple of thousand pounds of
food every two weeks, so it's almost i would say
about eight to ten thousand pounds of food a month
that goes out of the pantry in Loudon County and
Fairfax County. And then so that's that program, very busy one.
(03:57):
Our next program is my favorite. It's called Inspire a
Light Well, I think they're all my favorite, actually, but
Inspire our life program is our education program. So a
lot of the children go home to parents that are
not present, parents that are not home. Parents may not
be able to speak English or read English very well.
And so we have a homework club where they can
(04:17):
come here every Tuesday and they get homework assistants. They
have high school mentors that come in that are from
the Honor program and they help mentor them and help
them with their homework. And then we have the police
department here as well, and so the Personville Police department
has been instrumental in making this program successful. They are
incredible and when they come in, their lights are off,
(04:38):
and most of these kids are used to seeing lights on.
So for about that first year when we open this
program up, there was limited discussion between the children and
the police because they were intimidated. And now when the
police come in, they get frisks for stickers, so it's
actually the opposite role. And so the children love them.
They serve the children food, they mentor them as well,
(05:00):
just gives them a place of safety, security and assistance.
We've had. We just had our second one through the
program go to college, first generation and so she was
actually studying. She started August twenty seven. She's studying to
be an el teacher.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Oh wow, that's what.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
She wants to do. Yeah. Our other one, I got
the first one. He went military. So we were super
proud of you know what we're seeing happen. It takes
years because they start with us very little. So like
this young lady was with us for the past four
five years before she went to college. So we're seeing
the change in these children and helping to just break
(05:38):
that generational poverty through that program. And then and of
course it comes to the hot dinner. Everything we do
comes with food, so we do anything from Chick fil
a pizza to Mediterranean Chinese. We try to open up
that harit, that open up their eyes to see there's
so many different things that they could have.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Oh yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And then we do that one and then our next
one is our final one is Cooked for a Life.
Again another favorite and Cook for a Life is our
cooking classes. And so one of the things that happened
to me i was a child of hunger, was I
never knew how to cook. So at twenty one, when
I'm out on my own and I'm pregnant with my
(06:20):
first child, I'm like, I've got to figure out how
to cook for this kid. I have no idea what
I'm doing, and and you know, it just daunto me
that there's so many other children in that same situation
where they're going home and there's not a parent there,
and how do you learn to cook and how do
you learn to take care of yourself? So we teach
them how to make everything. We're actually going to start
a canned chicken challenge in January on social to let
(06:44):
people see how these kids make different things from canned
chicken and what can they do. And we have literally
first graders making homemade chicken nugget from caned chicken now.
But they've also learned smash burgers and how to make
ramen and all sorts of different things here in this
class to help and be self sufficient so when they
are at home by themselves, they don't have to find
(07:04):
food in the wrong places. They can actually be safe
at home.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I love that. I love that I got lucky. I
was not really a latch key kid. Everybody that I
knew was, but my mom was a latch key kid
when it wasn't common, and so she didn't want to
do that to us when I was little. She was
a stay at home mom. But yeah, I think it's
really important. You know, when you have these kids and
(07:29):
they're on their own and you do get hungry, you
do want a snack. You need that snack to be
able to focus on your homework and to be able
to know how to do that and to do it
safely and nutritiously too, because it's easy to grab a
little Debbie or a Hostess cake, you know, and that's
not always what you really need. I love that. So
(07:52):
this comes from from a place of experience all of this.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Oh yes, yeah, all of my programs are based on
how myself and my friends grew up. We all grew
up pretty much the same way, you know, in the
community of low income. I was in Section eat housing
it's not always called Section eight back then, and I
was with a single mom. My mom, bless her heart
in heaven. She was, you know, had a lot of
(08:18):
depression and a lot of mental health issues that I
didn't realize what it was as a child. I do
know now, and you know, I understand she tried her best,
but she was unable. And so I went to school
without eating because she didn't do the freelanch applications. And
so I know what it's like to tell people you're
on a diet because you're just hungry and you're too
embarrassed to say something. And so how I would supplement
(08:41):
is I actually would hang out at seven to eleven
with my friends and we would ask for quarters. We
called it bumming quarters, and we ate seven eleven hot dogs, pizza,
whatever we could get from the quarters that we got
that day. And that's how I ate versus eating at school.
And so that turned into a lot of anger as
a kid, really resentful, ended up getting kicked out of
(09:02):
middle school high school, became a high school dropout, actually
in the ninth grade, and I was just over it.
My mom was over it. Of course, she signed me
out and I went out and started waitressing, or actually
I was a hostess because I wasn't eighteen yet, and
then I went into waitressing once I turned eighteen. But
I started out hosting at Chile, so I do double
(09:24):
shifts so I could get a free meal, because if
you work in double you got a full free meal
versus fifty percent off. And you know, I figured I
would find a way to get out of it and
you know, make it successful. I wanted to be like
the women that came to seve eleven that gave us
the quarters, and they always looked looked so nice, and
their hair was clean and they smelled so good. And
I definitely was not. I was the opposite of that.
(09:45):
And I said, that's what I want, and I'll figure
out a way to get there. I love that.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And let's talk about that for a minute, because I
know what the United Way, the interviews I've done with them,
they have their Alice program. And I don't know if
you're familiar, but it's basically it means asked that limited
income constrained, but employed. And it's that group of people
who they you know, working things like waitressing. Maybe maybe
(10:12):
they're a you know, working in a police department. Maybe
they're not the officer, but maybe they're a secretary or
something like that, right, and they make what is most
people would consider a decent living. They go to work
every day, they don't seem to be having trouble, but
they make too much money to get assistants like food
stamps or you know those things, but they don't make
(10:34):
enough money to actually pay those bills and have food
in the pantry. And you know, all that kind of stuff.
And what you're saying was it may have even been
that those women in that group who were given you quarters.
Like That's one of the things about hunger is I'm
sure your mom, you know, to the world, was a
very successful woman. I mean, she held out a job,
(10:57):
she raised a child, I mean maybe children. You know,
there's so many things that happened behind closed doors in
families that we just don't know about, and people are
ashamed to share it. Yeah, and it's sad to think
about it like that, because you can't help people if
they don't share it, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, no, that's exactly actually what happened to me. My
first marriage was a marriage of physical abuse, unfortunately, and
that was ten years and when I finally became free
from that, I was making a decent living. I was
making a decent salary, but not enough to take care
of four children on my own daycare any of that.
(11:41):
And so when I went for help, I was actually
five dollars over the limit, and because that five dollars,
I couldn't get assistance that I really needed. And so
at our pantry, we actually don't check income because of that.
I know what it's like to make that five dollars
over where you're making a decent income but not enough
and you still need help, And so we make sure
(12:04):
that we help everyone.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, I love that. I've actually also been a part
of that where I made just over the limit and
still desperately needed the help. You know, it was told, well,
I'm sorry, you don't qualify, you know, and you just struggle,
and and I think there have been times, I know
there's been times where I didn't eat so that my
kids could, you know, and even when they could, it
(12:29):
wasn't as much as they.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Would have wanted.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know, there's just tough times and and we hide
those things. And I don't understand. I don't fully understand.
Why how do you get people past those stigmas so
that they understand you have these programs and that it
can help them.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So I talked to them. You know, we do a
lot of I do a lot of one on one conversations.
A lot of people will cool before they'll come in
and and ask because it's your you know, when you're
behind a screen sometimes to explain without somebody knowing who
you are. I do private appointments for people that are
really embarrassed. So I'll do it. You know, we close
(13:11):
at three. I let them come in at three thirty
four o'clock when they know no one's going to be here,
to do shopping comfortably, to make them feel more comfortable
to come here, because I don't want anyone to.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
One should suffer, right, and it's right, and so it's
it's rough, and so we do things like that a
lot to help them. During the government shutdown, for example,
that just happened, I set up Thursdays just for government employees,
and so they knew if they came in they were
(13:44):
only seeing other government employees that were furloughed. They were
not alone.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Wow, And that's what I think everybody needs. And you're,
you know, like I said, you have personal experience. And
I see you getting emotional, and I'm going to be
right there with you because you know, I've seen we're
going to talk about Christmas now because it's coming up
on that, and i know your organization is doing a lot,
but I see all these stories about organizations like yours.
(14:10):
And there was a year when my youngest was right
at the cusp of still believing but about to be
not and you know what I mean, not gonna say
more than that, And that particular Christmas, my marriage at
the time was falling apart, and he had said, oh,
I'm going to budget money, and he didn't, and we
(14:31):
had literally nothing. Christmas morning. My kids got up and
they were like, and it's not like we've ever had
big Christmases anyway, but to get up and to literally
not have anything to give them, and for that to
be how your child learns something that you weren't really
(14:51):
wanting to teach them.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
That's why organizations like yours and other people mean so
much to me, especially birthdays, Christmas, those special occasions because
you especially, you go back to school and everybody's like,
what you get? Yeah, my kids didn't have. They couldn't
say anything other than what my parents got them, you know,
and that wasn't much either, And it was like, you know,
(15:17):
I just felt like the way it felt like I
had failed, you know. Yeah, And I know I didn't,
you know, but at that moment, it was really hard.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, So why don't we.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Talk about the ways that you're helping families not feel
that way?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, at Christmas time, we have uh, well, we offer
Christmas meals, so every family gets a Christmas meal, whether
it's a hammer turkey, based on what they eat. Not
everybody eats pork, so we offer both. We do have
some families that do just holler meat, so we have
gift cards for them so that they can go get
(15:53):
the meat that they'll eat. So that way we make
sure everybody has the opportunity to eat a meal that
they can eat, and then they pre sign up online.
Our sign up actually was full by the first week
of November. It went that fast. This year. Yeah, I
opened it in October and it was full very quickly,
(16:14):
and so we had eight hundred children that we opened
spots for and by the first week of November we
were full. And we have a weight list right now
to see if we get more, then I can cool
them in and take them off that weight list, and
then I refer them to places that I know have
toys as well well, if I can find it. A
lot of them are closed. But what we do is
we do something called a Child's Wish and it's a
(16:37):
Christmas tree that we put up in our pantry every year,
and the children that are in our weekly homework club
program or our cooking classes, the ones we interact with
that we had that relationship with and we're mentoring, we
put them on our Christmas tree and so they get
a homelyad little wooden ornament with their picture in it,
(16:57):
and they get to keep this ornament after it comes
back to us. On the back of the ornament it
has their first name, their age, and what their Christmas wishes,
and then we put that on the tree for people
to come in and be able to take a tag
off and fill that wish for that child. So we
have had every tag taken off this year, so every
child that had their Christmas wish up there has been
(17:19):
their Christmas wishes come true. And so we make sure
that they get their their Christmas wish. And then all
the other children that we may not know personally, we
have gifts based on their age. So when they register,
they let us know, you know, girl boy gift age
of the child, so that we can give them a
age appropriate gift or gifts. If we have enough. We
(17:40):
like to do two or three per child so that
each child can have that gift. And we do things
like curling irons for teenagers, and you know, I put
out a few some of the teens wanted ug shoes
and you know those things that for teenager it's like,
you know, this is it right, Everybody's gonna look at me,
and so so I specifically put those kind of things
(18:02):
out there. Nike socks that Nike socks are huge, and
they're not you know, twenty bucks are buy one, get
one fifty percent off at Dicks. But to them, it's
not something they can afford. And so we just try
to help them feel like everybody else they can feel
like they're friends and go back to school and be like, yeah,
I got my Nike socks too, right, and maybe one
of the very few things. But they now feel like
(18:24):
they fit in, and we want to make sure that
they have that confidence, but they also have that blessing
at Christmas to get something they never thought they would get.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And the thing I like to tell
my kids about stuff like that is, you know, right now,
Champion is the brand, right that used to be the
Walmart brand. When I was a kid. That was the
cheap stuff. That was the stuff that you were embarrassed
to wear, and now everybody's wearing it with pride. So
it's like one of those things you're like, you know,
I will buy you these, you know, twenty dollars socks,
(18:55):
but you need to understand, you know, lifetime, you may
see this turn into what the poor people.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Wear, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
I love that, And so when did you decide to
start giving the gift cards out? I love that because
my son in law, he's from a Muslim family and
Indian family, and they only eat the whole all stuff.
And you know, I love that because you know, people
forget you know, yeah, we kind of get in our
little world and we think that everybody eats what we eat,
(19:28):
and that's not always the case. So how long have
you been doing that, you know, making sure to accommodate everybody?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Oh goodness, since I opened the pantry, which was in
twenty twenty, well was the end of twenty twenty, so
twenty twenty one. Immediately we had families from you know,
every background coming in eating food, and I realized quickly
I was like, okay, well what do you eat? It
was a learning lesson for me because there was a
(19:56):
lot of foods I've never even seen and heard of
or understand. I didn't understand hollimeede at that time because
I left an IT job to come do this. So
it and hollomeen are two completely different things. Yeah, and
so so I had to ask a lot of questions,
understand them, get to know them again. I try to
(20:19):
meet every client that comes in because I just think
it's important, you know, that we humanize ourselves, that we
you know that they know that they're loved, they know
that they're cared for, they know that they're not forgotten,
and they're not just a name that walks in. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Definitely, have you given a thought to like in the
summer months, like maybe a small planting farming type thing
where people can grow their own food so they can
learn how to do those things for themselves.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So we actually do teach that to the children. We
have hydro gardens in here because we don't have guardian space.
I actually have two little standing gardens in the front
of our window. Here. We're in a retail area, but
we have drove gardens and so right now there are
cherry tomatoes and basil and jalapeno was on there. They
wanted a salsa garden, and so they'll use that and
(21:10):
they eat from that and they're cooking classes. And I
do that to show them they don't need dirt, right
they A lot of these kids have places that don't
even have patios, and so if you don't have the space,
you can still grow in your house. I showed them
how to regrow green onions from a paper cup and
water and you stick it in there and it regrows.
(21:31):
So you don't actually need anything special because a lot
of people think, well, I need the equipment, I can't
afford the equipment. No, you can use a paper cup
with water and regrow your green onions.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, I had a coworker give me a pepper plant
probably two years ago now, and it was right at
the end of the season. And we in an apartment
and we do have a patio, but I mean, you
can't put it out there in the winter, you know.
So we set up a grow light on the top
of my dryer, my front loader, and it's been there
(22:03):
for two years. And that pepper plant has produced probably
thirty to forty other pepper plants that we've given away
that we've also you know, put out when it was summertime,
put out in the patio and gotten peppers from and
it's still in there, still growing. I mean, you know,
when you don't have seasons to deal with those things
can be pretty resilient. And I love that because, like
(22:24):
you said, not everybody has a patio, but you can
get a grow lighte and you can grow certain things,
you know, as long as you make space for it,
you can grow them in your house. It's amazing. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Where are your.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Needs right now? Are you set as far as most
of your Christmas programs or any of your other programs.
Do you need things?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
We do, so we do need gift cards still for
some of the other you know, the Holly Meet gift cards.
We still need. We are still raising funds to every
child gets a brown bag meal when they come here
for Christmas, so they get a meal to have, you know,
for their weekend because it's it's the holiday week now.
(23:08):
Schools closed, you know, during the Christmas holiday. So we'll
be giving out eight hundred of those. Each bag is
six dollars and twenty five cents. So we're raising five
thousand dollars to meet that need, which will all go
out on December twentieth for our holiday giving day. So
we're still working on that need. We still need toys
because I would love to accommodate the families that are
(23:29):
on the weight list and anywhere from elementary, middle to
high school. All three ranges are on the wait list.
The largest range that's on the weight list, I would
say is between nine and thirteen years old.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
We always need the kids, isn't it it is?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I don't understand that it is. Yeah, well, I think
what a lot of it is is the smaller children.
Their gifts are a lot cheaper, Like you can get
a big bag of Legos and you know, for five dollars,
and the little kid toys tend to be a little
bit cheaper. The older kids items are a little bit
more expensive. So even a Starbucks gift card or a
(24:09):
Chick fil A gift card for a preteen or a
teenager is a great idea, A tendo, a gift card. Yeah,
they would be extremely grateful for those, So any of
those kind of things, because a lot of the teenager stuff,
as you know, you go and buy a hoodie nowadays,
and it's like, you know, forty bucks, But a Chick
fil A gift card you can do for ten dollars.
They can get a meal and a gift right right.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I love that. I love that. Okay, So if people
are hearing this and they want to support what you're doing,
how do they go about doing that?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And they can either our addresses on our site, we
have a donate spot on our website www dot betterlife
dot org. Or they're welcome to drop off gifts at
our location. We in Percival is where we're collecting all
of the gifts because and rest, and we will be
giving them out in the parking lot again this year
(25:03):
since we don't have an actual site there yet. So
we're at two oh one North Maple Avenue Unit Fison
frank in Perceville, and they're welcome to drop them off
here or send them. We also do have an Amazon
wish Lifts wish list. I apologize on our website and
(25:23):
on our social media that they could just click by
gift and it'll come straight to us.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I love that. That's so smart, what a great idea.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
So, if you had to speculate, what do you think
your kids think of what you do? I mean, do
you think they get it? Do you think they're going
to follow on your footsteps?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
They're all doing different things. I don't know. I think
they will volunteer later on in life. I know one
of my younger ones, one of my fifteen year old
twin boys, he's got a heart of gold and he'll
tear up heart. He'll tear up every time that he's
at an event where I'm helping children and they ask
(26:05):
about me and ask my why, and it just breaks
his heart to hear anyone hungry. And I think he
started he was around eight when he had made an
allowance one day and he brought it to me and
he was crying and he's like, Mom, can you just
give this to the kids. Wow. So they do see it,
and it's definitely in their hearts and on their hearts,
(26:28):
and they love it. They love what we do, what
I do, and they volunteer with me or they're volunteered
some days too, but they volunteer quite frequently on their
own and they love it. And they'll bring their friends
to volunteer as well with them, so that they do
enjoy it. And they love Christmas. They dress up for Christmas.
I'm one of my other twins. He'll be the Grinch,
(26:50):
He's the Grinch every Christmas. My husband he's the Elf
every Christmas. So they enjoy, They enjoy be getting involved
like that and having a lot of fun with the kids.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I love that. I think that's one of those things
that as a society, were so much about convenience, and
it's so much easier to just give somebody else money
and let them handle things. But I think that you
can't really understand and can't really appreciate what you have
until you step out of your bubble and go down
(27:22):
and meet other people outside of your circle who you
would have never met otherwise, and have conversations like what
you and I are having, where you really talk about
each person's truth, you know, And I love that you're
teaching your kids to do that. And I hope and
I pray that that from each of them spreads to
(27:43):
you know, five more in each of their circles, who
then spread it to five more and so forth and
so on.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
To change generations, you know, break that generational poverty, change generations,
because they all deserve the same opportunity everybody else has.
And so that's that's the goal. And we had Volunteering
is huge. We also have lots of volunteer opportunities. We
had one gentleman volunteer a few weeks ago during our
(28:12):
homework club and the children at the end of the
homework club, they ask if they can go shopping so
they can bring home groceries to their family. And there
was a Oh, he was around eight years old and
he typically did shopping, and so he went and he
did his normal shopping after the homework club. And the
man that came to volunteer that night, he left choked up.
(28:33):
I could barely speak because it just until you see
him eight year old goose shopping for his family, you
don't know how it affects you. Yeah, and it's intense.
It's intense, and you know, every day it breaks my heart,
but every day it also warms my heart knowing that
they don't have to suffer and they don't have to
worry about food exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
You did your part each day. You've done your part.
That's awesome. I love that and I hate it because
we're now at the end of our time.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
I told you so.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's better Alife dot org, right, and you can find
out everything you need to know there. Sign up for programs,
sign up to volunteer, nowhere to don't, where to go
to donate. All that kind of stuff's all on bettera
Live dot org. Yes, ma'am, Okay, I really do appreciate
you making time for me today. I know it was
kind of last a minute, but it has been such
(29:26):
a blessing, and I hope that this conversation will be
a blessing to so many other people too.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Likewise, Likewise, you're amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under Podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News Network,
and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus.
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