BWFWS summer food donations way down, need remains constant

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

It’s sum­mer­time. School’s out, fam­i­lies go on vaca­tion, every­thing is great, right? Maybe summer’s not so great, not a day at the beach, for fam­i­lies liv­ing on the edge of poverty and for the local vol­un­teers who serve them. In fact, dur­ing sum­mer months Big Wal­nut area fam­i­lies liv­ing on the edge are still liv­ing on the edge, while food dona­tions that stock shelves at Big Wal­nut Friends Who Share are down — way down.

It’s well known that stu­dents from Big Wal­nut schools and local church mem­bers are very gen­er­ous dur­ing food dri­ves held in the months lead­ing up to Christ­mas. The Friends Who Share shelves are brim­ming with non-perishable foods, and the hun­gry in our com­mu­nity are well served by the food pantry, said Pam Jones, who serves as a com­mu­nity liai­son with the local, grass-roots social ser­vice agency; but with the cur­rent econ­omy and the state of unem­ploy­ment and under­em­ploy­ment in the area the need remains con­stant year-round.

“Dur­ing dif­fer­ent times of the year com­mu­nity food dona­tions are great and the shelves are full; there’s always plenty of food in the back room to restock the shelves with, but over the sum­mer months food dona­tions drop,” Jones said. “With food costs up dra­mat­i­cally the clients we serve have had an even greater need, and over the last two months we’ve had to buy basic foods to restock our shelves, espe­cially with staples.”

Jones said over 350 fam­i­lies reg­is­tered with Friends Who Share in search of non-perishable foods to feed their fam­i­lies have vis­ited each month dur­ing 2012. She said even in months when food dona­tions are up that the basics offered by BWFWS doesn’t pro­vide every­thing fam­i­lies need, but it helps.

“At this time of year, we find our­selves spend­ing about $2,500 each month from donated funds to keep basic food items on the shelves to help those less for­tu­nate in our com­mu­nity,” Jones said. ”A recent analy­sis of the food items we pur­chase indi­cated that cold break­fast cereal is the num­ber one demanded item. We spent over $1,500 from donated funds to BWFWS pur­chas­ing cereal since January.”

Jones said other needed items that are always in demand are canned pasta din­ners like spaghetti and ravi­oli, canned tuna and chicken breast, noo­dles and sauce pack­ets, dry pasta, pan­cake mix and syrup, peanut but­ter, jelly, pork lun­cheon meat (a.k.a. SPAM), spaghetti sauce, instant mashed pota­toes and rice, hamburger/tuna/chicken “helper”, and cake mix and frosting.

“Our local churches have been great,” Jones said. ”They help us main­tain our bot­tom line and from a quan­tity per­spec­tive they sup­port us over­all, we just get out of line over the sum­mer months.

“The Run For John, this year on Sep­tem­ber 1, will be a big mon­e­tary boost for us, but food dona­tions are light; and we get a lot more food dona­tions start­ing in Octo­ber and run­ning through Easter time,” Jones con­tin­ued. “All of that food ends up being used as it comes in, but we make a com­mit­ment to our clients that there will be food on the shelves year round. If the food is not there we have to buy it to keep our commitment.”

Jones said non-perishable, canned and boxed food items can be brought to the Big Wal­nut Friends Who Share Store at 216 High Street in Sun­bury — no out of date items, please.

The Friends Who Share store accepts donated items on Mon­day and Wednes­day from 9 a.m. until 11:30 a.m., or phone the store at 740–965-9596 to arrange other drop-off times.

In addi­tion to food assis­tance BWFWS pro­vides a host of other ser­vices to Big Wal­nut area fam­i­lies through­out the year, includ­ing cloth­ing, fur­ni­ture, kitchen appli­ances — any­thing needed in a household.

In keep­ing with the “We take care of our own” Friends Who Share phi­los­o­phy, through­out the year Big Wal­nut churches, schools and stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions, girl and boy scouts, Big Wal­nut area ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions, and indi­vid­ual donors and vol­un­teers all roll up their sleeves to help this unique com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tion meet local need.

To vol­un­teer, to donate needed items, or to make a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the food pantry or to other Friends Who Share projects, call 740–965-9596. Big Wal­nut Friends Who Share is located on the Inter­net at < bigwalnutfriendswhoshare.org >.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.