Make season of caring last into new year

This year marked a time where people really stepped up to help out those in need.

The season of caring: This month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is for many a time to volunteer at a community meal, donate to a food pantry, or give to a nonprofit in lieu of exchanging gifts with family.

The emotions of the season rooted in the Christian beliefs surrounding the celebration of Jesus’ birth have grown to include all faiths as well as the secular message to “feed the world” and help those less fortunate.

This year that message is amplified in need and in response.

Area food pantries have experienced more donations during the pandemic as people became aware of the hardships many have experienced with the loss of jobs and income. But those same pantries are dealing with need, in some cases four times what they see in a normal year.

“The numbers are through the roof,” Helping Harvest spokesman Doug Long told The Reading Eagle for a profile on the Berk County-based food bank that provides to 320 food distribution sites, including food pantries, soup kitchens, mobile markets, homeless shelters and school programs.

Long said the need they are witnessing is unprecedented. Last year’s total distribution totaled about 7 million pounds; this year it could reach 10 million pounds.

In Montgomery County, LeeAnn Rooney, executive director of The Patrician Society, said that in the months from March to May, the number of families serviced by the Norristown food cupboard doubled from 480 to 800 a month.

At the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities, executive director Barbara Wilhemy said they stopped counting. “We decided it was more important to feed them than to worry about how many there were,” Wilhemy said of the increase.

Manna on Main Street, which serves the Lansdale area of Montgomery County, distributed just shy of 596,000 pounds of groceries, compared to just over 226,000 pounds during the same period in 2019.

“I sometimes walk around Manna, and I look at all of the food and think ‘This food should be enough, right here.’ But it comes in, and the turnover is about a week, and it’s out again,” said Executive Director Suzan Neiger Gould.

When shutdowns began in March, food pantries immediately saw a loss of volunteers, many of whom were older and not comfortable going into the nonprofits to help. As the pandemic wore on, other volunteers have stepped up, the directors note, and food distribution has gone on unabated.

As we enter this Season 0f Caring, the work of food pantries will ramp up with food for holiday meals and in some cases gifts for children. But when the holidays end and a new year begins, pantry directors expect that the situation may become bleak. January and February are typically slow months for food drives and donations. Giving is not top of mind like it is in the holiday season.

Worrall told Reading Eagle reporter Michael Urban that things will become especially difficult entering the new year unless Congress approves funding to replace the federal CARES Act, which provided funding for Helping Harvest and the 43 food pantries in Montgomery County as well as the rest of the region.

Without replacement funding, Helping Harvest will be forced into a position it dreads: deciding which people get food and which don’t, Worrall said. “We’ve never had to say no to anyone, and we don’t want to start,” he said.

Other pantry directors echo Worrall’s concerns. When the traditional giving season ends Dec. 31, the need goes on, and in many cases is increased through the winter months when paying for heat robs even more of a struggling family’s food budget.

As we approach winter and the effects of the pandemic continue, we urge our readers to make this season of caring last. Hunger in our communities will go on; we ask that readers open their hearts and continue giving beyond the holidays. The next season it seems will require a little more caring.