St. Matthew’s House helped provide baby formula to the Southwest Community on Thursday.

The baby formula shortage has stressed parents as they try to find formula to feed their babies.

Families lined up to receive the baby formula and baby supplies at the organization’s food bank Lely Elementary, at 8125 Lely Cultural Parkway in Lely Resort.

The organization has been providing meals to more than 500 families, and now it is expanding its donations to assist parents while things like diapers and baby formula are hard to find.

St. Matthew’s House gathered enough baby food for 300 families. The food bank planed to give each family a pack of eight diapers. The food bank also had food like fruits, vegetables and meats to give out.

“It’s the price right now, anywhere between $15 and $40 for formula, and that really depends on what type of formula the baby is on, so there’s some formulas that you can buy very fair in price and there’s other formulas that are a bit expensive, and we’ll have a variety of formulas,” said Lorna McLain with St. Matthew’s House.

St Matthew’s House says its volunteers have been seeing new faces every time it holds a food giveaway.

“Our distributions have grown, all of our distributions have been seeing double in numbers,” McLain said. “That just shows the need that there is in our community, and we are so grateful that every single step along the way we have had so much support from the community. Even with the baby formula; the baby formula that’s come through St. Matthew’s House has been all donations.”

Families who turned out for the food drive were very thankful for the help.

“Some of the families out there, actually not for me particularly, but I’ve seen some family say that they couldn’t find formula to feed their kids. I think there’s gonna be a lot of people here that show up for this because again this is the first that it’s heard of that stop formula is helping and that’s what everybody needs,” asid Elaina Gianello, of Naples.

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