It's Silver Horizons' Mission to help keep low-income senior citizens, low-income veterans, and the family members living with them, feeling safe and secure and remaining in their own homes. Silver Horizons assists with life's basics: groceries, household bills, and with minor home repairs.

Although we assist in several areas to help struggling families enjoy a better quality of life, there is nothing more basic than helping someone who is hungry have enough food to eat. Silver Horizons' main focus is to address food insecurity. A grant in the area of Human Services would support Silver Horizons’ efforts to provide perishable and nonperishable food items to some of the most vulnerable people in our state and nation. It’s an unfortunate reality that New Mexico is the state with the highest percentage of seniors living in poverty – higher than any other state in the nation (data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). New Mexico also sees too many children going hungry and low-income veterans struggling to make ends meet.

After 46 years of serving senior citizens, Silver Horizons is facing an overwhelming number of low-income households asking for help, while at the same time grocery costs are significantly higher than in recent years.

Now think about the seniors raising grandchildren: 40% of the seniors assisted by Silver Horizons are raising a grandchild – all on an income that wasn’t enough to cover the senior’s own basic living expenses.

Most of the seniors and veterans Silver Horizons assists live on $700-$1,200/month (and most of these households are led by females). Many of the people Silver Horizons assists are between the ages of 50-65, and 75+. These realities shape our grocery distribution in the following ways:

• Larger households with seniors, veterans, adult children, and grandchildren, receive not only greater quantities of food, but also larger sizes/packages of these items.

• Silver Horizons distributes groceries to where low-income seniors and veterans live (HUD subsidized apartment buildings), or places where they frequent (such as senior and community centers).

• Silver Horizons delivers groceries to homebound seniors and veterans, and provides groceries at locations on bus routes.

Most of the people we serve say that without Silver Horizons they would not have enough food to eat, or they would have to leave their homes because of changing health needs that make their current home unsafe, or because they simply cannot afford their basic household expenses.