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Food Pantry Demand Rises as Donations Drop

August 15, 2009

STOUGHTON, MA - Food Pantries across the region, from Middleboro to Brockton, are seeing a drop in donations and rising demand during the economic slump. State officials reported the unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 8.6 percent in June, the most figure available. Jobs in the Bay State are down 106,400 — or 3.2 percent from one year ago. The Immaculate Conception Church Food Pantry in Stoughton, which serves about 70 families a week, is averaging about six new families each week.

Anne Havlin, a volunteer at the pantry who lives in Stoughton, said they’ve seen a “great increase in the number of people coming in” and it’s mainly because of local citizens being laid off. “Your heart breaks,” said Havlin. “You know it’s the last place people want to be.”

To help these local tradesmen and women, Havlin and other volunteers took the extra step of making business cards for the laid-off workers so they can hand them out in hopes of getting more work. “They’re no longer employed by businesses but their work is just as good as it was,” said Havlin, who said she’s made cards for carpenters, electricians, painters and seamstresses.

So the pantry doesn’t have to turn people away, Havlin said they give out smaller portions — a step they didn’t want to take but has become a necessary.

For other pantries, donations fluctuate, even during good economic times.

“We, in general, have noticed (a decrease in donations),” said Ruth Knapp, who has been running the Central Congregation Church’s Caring Center Pantry in Middleboro since 1993. “Donations are periodic, so it’s hard to judge. I still have regulars supporting me.” When donations are down, Knapp said congregants from her own and other local churches help out. “We get what’s needed,” Knapp said.

For Brockton’s Catholic Charities, which feeds about 200 people a week, 15 percent of all they provide comes from private donations. “We’ve stayed pretty steady,” said Jesse Graham. “But it’s primarily because we have the federal funding. We get (food) from the Greater Boston Food Bank. It helps.”

Demand for food during the first quarter of the year was up 208 percent over last year at Food for Friends, the pantry operated by the First Lutheran Church on Main Street in Brockton.

St. Paul’s Table, a soup kitchen at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brockton, also reported seeing more people in need of food, including, for the first time, families with children.

The food pantry at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Brockton has had to close its doors twice in recent months when the shelves were bare.

“There isn’t enough food to serve the city’s pantries,” said Philomena Hare of the Salvation Army.

 

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