In March 2010 Ms. Ida Mar­tin was hon­ored for her work found­ing Bluffton Self Help. Ms. Mar­tin founded the non-profit orga­ni­za­tion in 1987 to help work­ing fam­i­lies and senior cit­i­zens in emer­gency need of food, cloth­ing and short term assis­tance. In 2009, 22,000 peo­ple were served by the orga­ni­za­tion. At a spe­cial Founder’s Din­ner in March, Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka declared March 5^th the offi­cial Ida Mar­tin Day, com­mem­o­rat­ing her 30 years of ser­vice to area res­i­dents. This is her story… After grow­ing up and attend­ing board­ing school and nurs­ing school the area, Mar­tin mar­ried, moved to Detroit and raised here fam­ily there. She and her hus­band returned to Bluffton in 1979 fol­low­ing Mr. Martin’s retirement.

From the time when she was a lit­tle girl, she wanted to help oth­ers. States Ms. Mar­tin, “I’d give my allowance to peo­ple on the street. I learned to give because my fam­ily did. We were always help­ing oth­ers. We would often cook for 50–60 peo­ple a week. Doing for oth­ers just was what we did.”

Serv­ing those in need in Bluffton became her pas­sion and iden­tity. She con­tin­ues, “Early on, peo­ple would come by to ask for help, so I did what I could. Well, the word got out — and lines of peo­ple would show up at our house look­ing for help. When I would talk with these peo­ple who had so lit­tle, and I had so much, I knew had to do something. “

With the help of sev­eral com­mu­nity lead­ers and busi­ness peo­ple, Bluffton Self Help was born in the spring of 1987. The charity’s loca­tion moved from Mrs. Martin’s garage to spots around Bluffton until it set­tled at the for­mer town jail, just across from May River Grill. It con­tin­ues to be the home of Bluffton Self Help today.

But com­mu­nity needs have out­paced the organization’s cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties. The pantry is rarely full because the demand for food is so great. Cus­tomers wait in long food lines out­side the build­ing most days of the week.