What you can do
The Community Foodbank of New Jersey holds volunteer days on Sundays several times each year to enable the Jewish community to participate. The next such date is Sunday, Dec. 7, 1-4 p.m. Volunteers must sign up to schedule a visit.
For more information, contact the Community Foodbank at 908-355-3663 and ask to speak with the volunteer department.
November 13, 2008
Emergency food pantries are facing a crunch. As the need for their services increase across the community, donations are falling.
“We always have an increase in people between now and the holidays, but this year people seem more intense and needy — they not only need food but clothes, furniture, and household things,” said Diane Stein, who coordinates volunteers from Congregation Beth El in South Orange for the emergency food pantry at the Lamb of God Church in West Orange. “There are people on line who are working and just not able to feed their families. We had a nurse’s aide last week, veterans, single men, grandmothers raising their grandchildren, and moms with infants.”
The need is on the rise all over New Jersey. Kathleen DiChiara is president of the Community Foodbank of New Jersey, located in Hillside, which supplies food to over 1,000 emergency food pantries across New Jersey. She is seeing a 30 percent increase in the numbers of people seeking help, she said, adding, “For so many, it’s the very first time. That’s a scary indicator.” Last year, DiChiara said, the Community Foodbank helped over 500,000 people — this year, it will likely provide services to at least 650,000.
After the first two weeks of the Check-out Hunger campaign — through which grocery stores offer people the opportunity to contribute a few dollars to the Community Foodbank — donations are down 17 percent. Just to keep up with the growing number of people needing help, “we need to increase our food supply by 30 percent,” said DiChiara. “That is not happening.” At the same time, state funds provided for food purchases have not risen commensurate with the cost of food, “so the dollars are not going as far,” she said.
As supplies at the Community Foodbank go, so go the supplies everywhere. Marci Silbert, who cochairs the emergency food pantry at Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, said, “We are experiencing both shortfalls in donations as well as food we receive from the Foodbank in Hillside.”
DiChiara said her agency is trying to keep up with demand by purchasing food in bulk — 300-pound sacks of rice, beans, and pasta, for example — and then repackaging it into family-size bags. “We’re doing everything we can to stretch every dollar,” she said.
Needs are rising not only in the usual pockets of poverty. “It’s very spread out,” said DiChiara. “We’re seeing that in Morris County the food stamp office and welfare offices are deluged.
“When you’re seeing that in Morris County, one of the richest counties in the United States, then you know the areas of greater poverty are in trouble.”
Depleted supplies at emergency food panties is just one of many issues emerging from the financial crisis that Jewish Family Service of MetroWest NJ is confronting. “Overall, we’re talking a 60 percent increase in everything related to safety-net issues,” said JFS executive director Reuben Rotman. In addition to sending people to food pantries, JFS spends $15,000-$20,000 on food gift cards every year, $8,000 of which is provided by government grants. Although JFS has not seen an immediate increase in the number of people who need referrals to a food pantry or who need food gift cards, Rotman said, “I’m expecting it.”
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