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LIFT-UP gets big boost to open larger Aspen food pantry

 A local nonprofit will receive a more than $28,000 increase to its county funding in order to serve families in need in the Aspen area. Morgan Neely has the details.  

 

With seven area food pantries, LIFT-UP, based in Rifle, provides meals for thousands of valley residents every year. And now, with the help of Pitkin County’s Healthy Community Fund, Lift-up’s upgraded Aspen center will be able to provide more food, and a better variety of food, to families and individuals in need of temporary assistance.

“This is actually a very exciting development for our community,” she says.

Mitzi Ledingham, deputy director of Pitkin County Health and Human Services, told county officials on Tuesday that an increase in grant funding will help LIFT-UP store more produce, frozen foods and meats, and that LIFT-UP will administer two of the county’s major food assistance initiatives, Commodities and the Senior Food Program.

They have separate volunteers training to take those two programs on,” she told county commissioners.

Ledingham says the expansion to LIFT-UP may even eliminate the need for mobile food pantries in the valley.

“It’s going to be really great; a one-stop shop,” she says.