Military Families Receive Holiday Dinners From Food Bank

More than 200 military families received holiday dinner packages with all the trimmings Thursday through a San Diego food bank drive at the Murphy Canyon Albertson’s.

28,000 active duty military personnel, dependents, and veterans quality in San Diego for the food bank’s emergency assistance program.

“I heard about it from my neighbors and it's really a blessing to have this on Christmas because I’m without a job right now and pregnant now so it's kind of hard,” Marine wife Hiaceneik Mcgee told NBC7. "There’s a lot of military people barely getting by, especially on the holidays. It’s a great blessing."

To qualify for the program a family of four must make less than $36,000 a year.

"If you figure it out, they barely make minimum wage – if you figure out how many hours they work,” Joy Phillipp explained of the hours many servicemen and women work.

Because of the high cost of living in San Diego and the difficulties military spouses often have finding work, many military families qualify for food stamps.

"They estimate about a 30% unemployment rate among spouses of active duty military personnel because of the mobile nature of the military, the spouses have a hard time finding a job, so in SD especially you need that second job to get by and that creates more hardships on these families."

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