VOTE: FAM Vies for $20K Grant to Feed Kids

San Clemente's food bank and social service nonprofit Family Assistance Ministries is asking for residents to vote online every day for the rest of the month to help them win $20,000.

Click here to vote.

The grant from Walmart will go to help feed hungry children, said FAM Director Mary Gray-Perdue. She said FAM is one of four Orange County agencies vying for the grant, and one of 170 throughout the nation. FAM was nominated to compete for the grant by Orange County's Second Harvest Food Bank, which is a clearing house for a lot of the food aid in the county.

The money will go to the organization with the most votes, she said Wednesday morning, as of which time FAM was ranked number 27 on the list.

Perdue recounted stories of families bringing four-year-olds crying with hunger to the door, or a woman for whom volunteers had to cook food immediately after she came sobbing to the door with her four starving children.

Perdue said one of the most important aspects of FAM was that it not only provided food to desperate families, but also helped them to establish a plan to get back to self sufficiency.

"Sometimes they're so far down, they don't know how to navigate this," Perdue said. "This isn't your life story -- there's going to be a tomorrow and the next day, and the next. We'll figure out how to make it work."