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Falmouth veterans launch year-round food bank

The Falmouth Veterans Collaborative will host its next food pantry on April 5 at the Amvets Post on Palmer Avenue. The pantry is held twice a month.
Falmouth Amvets Post 70
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The Falmouth Veterans Collaborative will host its next food pantry on April 5 at the Amvets Post on Palmer Avenue. The pantry is held twice a month.

A local Air Force veteran has helped launch a mobile food pantry to ensure that his fellow service members have enough to eat.

Alan Driscoll served three years in Vietnam, and recently co-founded the Falmouth Veterans Collaborative. It's working with the Cape and Islands Veterans Outreach Center to offer lunch every first and third Tuesday of the month.

The Center is helping veterans experiencing homelessness to access housing and food, executive director Jim Seymour told CAI in February.

"Our mission is to provide services to veterans who may be at-risk of being homeless or food insecurity," Seymour said. "It really is paramount for us as we come to work every day to address these needs."

But pride often gets in the way, says Driscoll of the Falmouth Veterans Collaborative.

"It's breaking that cycle of, 'No, I don't want to take it, leave it for somebody else,'" Driscoll tells CAI. "If you do this often enough you don't have anybody picking it up, and you have a ton of people who are in need that really don't have to be."

The Falmouth Veterans Consortium incorporates Amvets, Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars, and operates independently of Falmouth town government.

The next food pantry, on April 5, will serve at Amvets Post 70, 336 Palmer Avenue. To qualify, veterans should call 508-778-1590 and have a Veteran ID Card.

"The trick is getting them to take advantage of it," Driscoll says. "I think they don't want to appear poor to anyone, which is not the case. They're veterans — they stuck their little necks out there for this country, and this is something we can do for them."

Patrick Flanary is a dad, journalist, and host of Morning Edition.