September is Hunger Action Month and you’d be hard-pressed to find more action to fight hunger on the Cape than at the Family Pantry of Cape Cod in Harwich.
The huge operation that occupies one large building on Queen Anne Road and has several satellite programs is the only one of 30 Cape food pantries that serves the entire Cape.
Last year the pantry served 9,200 people, gave out more than 56,000 bags of groceries and 27 tons of clothing, Executive Director Christine Menard said, easily reciting the statistics.
The pantry has a satellite program at Cape Community College, a mobile food pantry that serves Brewster, Chatham, Eastham and Provincetown and the Second Glance Thrift Shop in Harwich, which offers high-end clothing, jewelry, furniture and household goods.
The pantry at 133 Queen Anne Road defies the image of a small pantry in a church basement or old storefront. It a huge warehouse with banana boxes full of clothing and cartons of food and drinks stacked to the ceiling and a room lined with clothing for infants to adults.
The place was humming with activity on a donation afternoon last Thursday while clients lined up for food packed by volunteers. The whole operation runs with only three full-time and three part-time staff and 630 volunteers.
“They are passionate and wonderful,” Menard said describing the volunteers. “Without them we would not exist.” That allows 87 percent of every dollar to go toward the food program and only 13 percent to overhead, she added.
“Most people think of an emergency pantry,” Menard said. “We’re more of a sustaining pantry,” and she provided statistics to prove that point.
Most households on the Cape have two people working, but they can’t make ends meet, people like grocery clerks, landscapers, retired teachers, she said, as well as seasonal workers who make $10 or $11 an hour. Summer activity was up 18 percent this year.
Trying to get by
Former Pantry Executive Director Mary Anderson saw the need for the community college program after seeing a study that 30 percent of students and faculty at such colleges don’t get enough food. The mobile program serves seniors who are vulnerable without transportation, based on a study that showed they don’t have access to three meals a day.
“The bulk is working families and the working poor,” Menard said, but added, “They only come when they have to.” The average visit is seven times a year.
The Family Pantry also has made it easier for those clients to survive each month on the food donations by changing its policy in June to allow them to come every two weeks instead of three weeks. That means, Menard said, that their money goes to other things like rent and car payments and is an average savings of $400 a month for the families.
“The economic impact is that for every $5 in benefits, the community gets back $9,” she said. Only 6 percent of clients come 12 times a year and the summer usually slows down when people can work two or three jobs, Menard said. “It’s a different dynamic than what people expect. “It’s more about families trying to get by.”
The Family Pantry also is “trying to make it easy as possible to get in the door,” she said. It uses the federal poverty guidelines, which is less than $22,000 a year for a single person, but the pantry workers do not require any documentation except proof of address. They only ask for the annual family income and how many are in the family, “but they don’t have to prove it,” Menard added.
“We want you to be happy and feel comfortable. Once you realize it’s easy, we welcome you. If you get in the door, you probably need it. You’re not going to leave without food.”
Variety of choices
The pantry is also “a choice pantry,” which means the clients can choose the food they want instead of having a pre-packed bag of things they might not eat. The pantry also aims to provide nutritious foods.
“The goal is 30 percent fresh fruits and vegetables,” Menard said. “We’re close to 20 percent.” Having a balanced diet helps cut health care costs, and food related illnesses are diminished, she said, and without it, health care costs are 121 percent higher.
Toward that goal, the pantry has a 9,000-square-foot garden behind the building that supplies 6,000 pounds of fresh vegetables annually and helps the pantry budget. Linda McCullough runs it with 40 volunteers.
A family of four gets four bags a visit, including a full bag of fresh fruits and vegetables, bags of dairy, eggs, protein and bread and a “surprise and delights,” bag with some extras like a special cheese. The bags always have lean meats and plenty of fish provided by the Cape Fishermen’s Alliance.
“We buy from them and it keeps them fishing,” Menard said. The Greater Boston Food Bank leaves food at the Queen Anne site for distribution to all the Cape pantries as well.
The pantry also runs a nutrition education program on Tuesday mornings with two nurses and a nutrition educator for anyone in the community who has diabetes or high blood pressure, which they monitor.
Clothes and more
The clothing boutique at the Queen Anne site has been expanded to allow clients to shop for clothing when they come for food. It is always in need of more men’s and children’s clothing, Menard said. Ten percent of the donations are good enough to go to Second Glance, an idea to get more revenue that began with the former director Anderson, who served for 10 years. Donations for Second Glance can be brought to the main pantry building.
Additional services the pantry staff provides include help with applying for SNAP (food stamp program) and fuel assistance. Two special programs each year for clients are Thanksgiving dinners for about 500 and Christmas food and gift packages for about 1,100.
This dynamic program started 28 years ago with “10 guys from St. Vincent de Paul,” Menard said, who started a small pantry in Harwich. Since then, it has occupied several buildings until buying its own building named for one of the founders, the late George Morris, “a great guy,” Menard said, whom she knew for many years when she supplied food to the pantry as manager of the Harwich Stop & Shop.
“We get a lot of donations. The community has always supported us,” she said. Despite the volunteers and generous donations, the operation takes a lot of money and is nearing completion of a $1 million capital campaign, with about $140,000 to go. Part of that goes to the purchase and renovation of the 2nd Glance Thrift Shop which moved to a building on Route 28 a year ago.
The pantry holds an annual gala that raises a substantial amount and many business and organizations hold separate fundraisers throughout the year. Most recently, Citizens Bank donated $5,000 to support the mobile pantry as part of $415,000 gave across the state for Hunger in Action Month.
“We’re trying to figure out sustainability,” Menard said.
To volunteer or to request services, contact the pantry at 508-432-6519.
