Economic woes have caused the need for food to go up ”“ and many in the region do not fit the stigmatized picture of a homeless or hungry person.
“There are just really regular folks who are struggling to put gas in their cars or buy groceries for their children, and it”™s just really unfortunate and frightening because they”™re just regular people,” said Jeanne Blum, executive director of Caring for the Homeless of Peekskill Inc. “They also make choices to buy their prescription medications. So something falls by the wayside because there”™s just not enough money to cover all of that.”
The program runs the Sunny Donut Free Breakfast Program, which serves a continental breakfast including cereals, eggs, juice, coffee, tea, toastable items like waffles and French toast, and weekly hot breakfasts for the general public.
Blum said the program mostly serves seniors, single parents and their children, the under-employed, the unemployed and the Latino day laborer population or “anyone who needs to have a good, healthy start to the day.”
“We”™ve been getting a lot more traffic and it”™s actually pretty much on par with our contributions,” said Blum, who noted that the program gets most of its food from the Food Bank of Westchester and some from food drives, such as the Girl Scouts or churches.
Blum said local businesses such as Shop-Rite and Panera Bread have been generous in donating food for the program.
Blum said there has been a 40 percent increase in the number of breakfasts served since last year this time. (From March 2007 to March 2008, 8,820 breakfasts were served compared with 6,096 breakfasts served the year before).
The program also provides bagged groceries, a service on the rise.
“We are here if you need it, thankfully it is a safety net and that”™s what we”™re here for, to help alleviate hunger and homelessness in the community,” Blum said.
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Naomi Adler, president and CEO of the United Way of Westchester and Putnam and who formerly oversaw the Rockland County chapter, said the need for food will increase with children out of school, where they can get free lunch subsidy programs, in the summer months.
“Most people are giving food around the holidays,” Adler said. “They need to remember that sometimes the greatest need is during the summer months when school is out. Those children are not going to be getting those free, nutritious lunches for the entire summer. I worry about them and that”™s another reason why when the summer hits the request for food goes up.”
Rosa Boone, executive director of the Westchester Coalition for the Hungry and Homeless, said, “Agencies are reporting back to me that the numbers have increased 3 to 5 percent (of people in need of food) from the beginning of the year.”
“We”™ve estimated that more than 200,000 people in Westchester are hungry,” Boone said. “Now we know with the high unemployment that more people are being seen.
We”™re seeing more of the middle class people now from reports from food pantries and soup kitchens.”
Boone said the coalition served 5.5 million meals, half to children, in 2007.
Boone said there is some duplication associated with the results, but “even if it”™s 100 people, there”™s no excuse for people to be hungry in affluent Westchester.”
Since demand has increased, the Boone”™s organization is starting to ration hoping that will help ease some of the pain for families going to bed hungry and leave some for the next hungry mouths.
“Catastrophic illnesses really do cause people to turn to us for help,” Boone said.
Boone said she recommend that shelters and food programs use the food bank as much as possible because they can get the food at 10 cents per pound: “We supply them in the form of grants,”
Boone said the coalition just finished the NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers) major food drive in May.
Last year, 165,000 pounds of nonperishable food was collected from that drive and given to the soup kitchens pantries and shelters of Westchester.
This year, it about the same amount or maybe a little more than last year.
Boone said the pantries and soup kitchens fill up their cupboards and “it helps us tremendously over the summer.”
Still, the need for food is looming.
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“The donations have been down for the last two to three years so this is nothing new,” said Christina Rohatynskyj, executive director of Food Bank for Westchester. “We”™ve been scrambling to purchase more food.”
“We”™re buying less food with the same dollar we had two years ago,” Rohatynskyj said.
The Food Bank for Westchester primarily gets donations from the USDA as well as Americas Second Harvest, a national food bank program with corporate backing.
Rohatynskyj said nonperishable food donations have been down, but fresh produce donations have been up.
Rohatynskyj said that what corporations make is based on what the consumer is demanding, and the consumer is demanding fresh fruits and vegetables and ready-to-eat meals, “a reflection that both adults in the family are working, so more and more stores are requiring those kinds of products.”
“Companies see waste and they take measures to eliminate those mistakes,” Rohatynskyj said. “They”™re being smarter and brighter and more careful, so that all impacts what food banks were based on, and that is the mistakes of the food industry.
“The problem is that we don”™t have a lot of food donors in Westchester County,” Rohatynskyj said. “We cannot go outside of our service area, but we do what we can and we”™re very aggressively pursuing whatever donations are possible in our area.”
“There may be people who last year was just getting by but this year don”™t have enough money for food,” Rohatynskyj said. I think they”™re feeling the hit of the increase in cost of transportation, which impacts their employees, so we”™re all in the same boat. If we”™re all in the same boat we all need to help each other it will help all of us in the long run.”
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