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The same week as Wall Street financiers waited anxiously for a rescue, hundreds of northeast Indiana residents waited anxiously for their next meal.
And their wait has stretched much longer than the time it took the White House and Congress to cobble together a bailout. Those who feed the hungry have been watching the numbers grow for months – the lines for assistance stretching longer and pantry and warehouse inventories shrinking smaller. For those at the bottom of the economic heap, it’s long past the point of urgency.
“This is probably one of the most generous communities anywhere, but there is a desperate need right now,” said Jane Avery, executive director of Community Harvest Food Bank, “I’ve never used words like ‘desperate’ and ‘crisis,’ but I’m using them now. … For the first time in my 12 years here, I’m scared.”
Her fears come from the nearly empty shelves of the food bank’s warehouse. The supplies continue to arrive, but the need has grown so great that Community Harvest can’t keep up.
On the Saturday that the remnants of Hurricane Ike drenched northeast Indiana, more than 350 people lined up outside the food bank’s headquarters at 999 E. Tillman Road, carrying plastic tote bags or laundry baskets to receive donations.
There was little to offer – cereal bars, a head of lettuce, pints of milk. The warehouse shelves nearby were empty except for bottled water, generic diapers and large cans of vegetables that will be distributed to soup kitchens.
Across town, another group waited in line for a Community Harvest distribution at the Salvation Army.
The region’s largest food bank, a part of the nationwide Feeding America network, does not require its clients to produce proof of income. Amie Burton, who oversees the TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) distributions for Community Harvest, said the effort to weed out the handful of people who might abuse the system would more likely hurt those who truly need it.
Indeed, the spare provisions are hardly enough of an enticement for anyone other than the truly needy. It’s only after the food has been distributed that the volunteers collect information for their records. On that rainy Saturday, a young woman accompanied by a school-age boy accepted the small offering of food and quietly answered “nine,” when asked how many people were in her household.
The need is the same across the community. At St. Mary’s Soup Kitchen, volunteers fed 600 people in a four-hour period a week ago Wednesday. Diane Day, the program’s director and chef, said that figure was a one-day record for the soup kitchen. The demand has increased every year in the three years she has been on the job, she said.
St. Mary’s serves soup and bread seven days a week from a walk-up window at its South Lafayette Street parish. Day said she once cooked 120 gallons of soup a day; now she’s preparing 180 gallons a day. The soup kitchen has always ministered to the city’s homeless, but Day said the people at the window now include older residents with disabilities, young mothers with children and the working poor.
“I’ve seen people at the window who I know have jobs because I’ve seen them at work,” she said. “I think people don’t realize that the person they might be standing next to at the grocery store has to go to a soup kitchen just to get by.”
At Wellspring Interfaith Center, the executive director, Frank Zirille, said distributions from the food bank there are up 30 percent. That figure also reflects the expansion of service to residents from the West Creighton area.
Wellspring operates one of 28 pantries in the Associated Churches network, with distributions limited to people from within a geographic area. The primary service area for Wellspring, 1316 Broadway, is the West Central neighborhood.
Zirille said his agency tries to give out at least a five-day supply of food for each household member, but the distributions are limited to once a month.
“We’re seeing people who aren’t used to coming to food pantries,” he said. “But they are out of a job; they’ve got fixed costs that they have to meet – they need help.”
The hunger problem is not just an urban one. Burton, at Community Harvest, said some of the people who come to the food bank on Saturday mornings have driven from one of the eight other counties the agency serves. It’s difficult for people who have never before needed help to accept it, and they sometimes avoid a local distribution site because they are embarrassed to be seen by a neighbor or a fellow church member.
Community Harvest’s Avery said the current shortage is a problem of demand, not supply.
“Our donors are great,” she said. “It’s just that the food is going out faster than it’s coming in.”
She said the food bank depends on generous contributions from Wal-Mart and Kroger, as well as the organizations, foundations and individuals who donate food or cash. Community Harvest’s farm wagon program sends two fully stocked trucks to almost 30 sites every week, in addition to the weekly distributions at its headquarters and at the Salvation Army.
Community Harvest also supplies dozens of food pantries throughout northeast Indiana, delivers a two-week supply of food to about 900 seniors through its SeniorPak program and stocks the Community Cupboard at its offices so that agencies like Cancer Services can refer its clients directly for food assistance. The school BackPack program sends 15 to 20 pounds of food home with students each weekend to ensure they will have something nutritious to eat.
Avery said about 18 months ago, Community Harvest’s warehouse was flush with supplies, but a “perfect storm of bad news” struck: job losses, Midwest floods, and rising food and fuel prices. Demand quickly outstripped supplies.
Day, at St. Mary’s, said she is seeing a change in support for the soup kitchen.
“It used to be that a women’s group, for example, would make a contribution from their dues and call and ask where to send the check,” she said. “Now they are calling and offering to volunteer instead. I understand – everyone’s hurting.”
Zirille, at Wellspring, said his organization works with various groups to target donations. Aldersgate United Methodist Church, for example, collects coffee and sugar for the food pantry. Another group collects feminine hygiene products. Donors step up when they understand that they are the only source for those items.
“A lot of it is marketing the need, and we need to do more of that,” he said. “But the problem is that you are so busy trying to deal with the day-to-day issues that you don’t have time for the marketing.”
Wellspring’s board of directors has made the decision to keep the agency’s food bank fully stocked, even when the supply from Associated Churches and donations from congregations and individuals fall short. That means buying supplies of cooking oil, flour, fresh eggs, bread and other items when contributions fall short.
“When I started in ’04, we spent about $9,000 out of pocket to cover the shortfall. We already expect to spend about $30,000 this year, he said.
To a person, the individuals who work with those in need express appreciation for donors. They all acknowledge the uncertainty even those who are working feel and why it might keep them from sharing. But they also see on a daily basis people whose biggest concerns are not the status of their 401(k) accounts but whether there will be enough food to get themselves and their families through the week, or even the day.
“Why should any Hoosier be involuntarily hungry?” asks Avery. “I just hope those people out there who aren’t faring badly can give a little more. I implore them to give.”
