When people escaping the devastating Hurricane Harvey landed in the area, Metrocrest Services gathered their available resources, brought in volunteers and called for donations to help evacuees.
However, this immediate effort depleted many of the organization’s food pantry items and left them in need of additional items to continue servicing their communities and neighbors.
“Many of our items that were our staple items like canned soup, canned fruit, baking goods and laundry detergent, a lot of those items are in great demand right now,” said Metrocrest Services CEO Tracy Eubanks. “Because we focused primarily last month on Harvey, all of our donations came in related to Harvey. Items like soup and so forth were not donated, so we have emptier shelves in those areas.”
Eubanks said Metrocrest is looking to get the food pantry back to its normal level to provide those in the area a “good shopping experience” and a good selection of basic items.
About 600 people use the food pantry every week, and each individual family generally receives about 25 pounds of food, which adds up to about 15 to 18 thousand pounds of food being distributed each week. About 80 percent of the food in the pantry comes from the community while the rest comes from the North Texas Food Bank and retail stores like Dollar Tree and Aldi’s.
The upcoming holiday season will require a demand of more items like canned goods, macaroni and cheese, rice and beans for holiday programs like Food for Thanksgiving Week, which provides children who may not have access to food at school with a week’s worth of food.
“Our back stock got depleted during Hurricane Harvey, and we’re a little bit behind on having the supplies we’ll need. We’re now beginning to transition from Harvey to the general needs of the pantry and for the holiday season, which will be quite busy,” Eubanks said.
Another item Eubanks asks the community to give is toilet paper. Not many people think to give toilet paper, but it’s an essential item many people need, he said. Eubanks said he remembers times when senior citizens who visited the pantry for the first time cried when they found out they could have toilet paper because they had gone so long without it.
Metrocrest has been pushing out their food pantry needs via social media and will soon begin to put out a list of specific items needed for the holiday season, as churches and companies start their annual holiday food drives benefitting Metrocrest.
