Food pantries cope with coronavirus during holidays
Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities, Salvation Army continue to help community
With rising COVID-19 numbers and the rapidly approaching holiday season, local food pantries are dealing with increased need and reduced volunteer help.
Barbara Wilhemy, executive director of the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Communities, said the coronavirus pandemic caused its food pantry to return to an old way of serving the community — offering boxes of food with no choices outside the front door, for safety reasons.
The organization also started offering delivery of food boxes to other sites in the community.
“We’re actually trying to make delivery a more permanent piece,” Wilhemy said. “We feel like we’re seeing a need we’re forced to see because of COVID.”
Wilhemy said the Pottstown Cluster has seen “more new households this year than any other year,” but it doesn’t have exact numbers on how many people they’ve helped.
“We decided it was more important to feed them than to worry about how many there were,” Wilhemy said.
Pottstown Cluster is also operating with a reduced number of volunteers. Usually staffed by retired community members who are at high risk for COVID, Wilhemy said many volunteers haven’t been able to work since March.
In spite of this shortage, the volunteers who felt comfortable working have kept the place going, said Anissa Jones, the Pottstown Cluster’s food service and volunteer coordinator.
“Our organization really came together, everyone just chipped in extra,” Jones said. “We’ve had some amazing volunteers who’ve stuck with us the entire time.”
Still, Wilhemy said Pottstown Cluster staff are hesitant to let any new volunteers in since they don’t want to risk COVID exposure from people they don’t know as well.
“We’ve been pretty cautious about bringing in new bodies into the building,” Wilhemy said. “It’s a little scary.”
The reduced number of volunteers led to some changes in what donations Pottstown Cluster could accept. In the spring, Wilhemy said the organization couldn’t take food donations for a while because there weren’t enough people to sort all the food.
Instead, thanks to a “significant increase in financial donations,” Wilhemy said Pottstown Cluster could purchase palettes of food items that didn’t require sorting.
“We’re grateful that people have a heart to help,” Wilhemy said.
As the holiday season approaches, Pottstown Cluster is “more prepared for what’s happening,” Wilhemy said.
The organization will offer its annual holiday donation box this year. It doesn’t offer a box for Thanksgiving, only Christmas. The sign-up is entirely online, and 200 families will get boxes with a main course like a turkey, ham or chicken as well as sides and desserts, Jones said.
Pottstown Cluster also does a Christmas toy program for children, and that looks different this year, too. Jones said instead of setting up a “toy shop” where parents in need can come in and select toys for their children, this year parents sign up online and write down three or four things their children like. Volunteers will then select toys for each child and package them for a pick-up at the door.
Major Jeny Shurtleff, head of the food pantry at The Salvation Army of Pottstown, said the organization couldn’t allow people into the building from March to July, so all meals had to switch to take-out. People are now allowed into the building to get their food, but they can’t stay to eat it for safety reasons.
Shurtleff said the Salvation Army offers a soup kitchen lunch every Wednesday, and a food pantry on Thursday. Since September, Shurtleff said she tries to make every soup kitchen lunch a hot meal as opposed to a cold sandwich.
“The numbers went up and stayed up since March,” Shurtleff said. The soup kitchen lunch attendance increased from around 50 people to around 70 people every week.
With limited volunteers, Shurtleff said “it’s very stressful” to prepare the Wednesday meals. The current staff includes just Shurtleff and three volunteers to prep the food, distribute it and clean up.
In March, The Salvation Army food pantry switched from a choice pantry, where people could select what foods they wanted, to a prepackaged food box. People are still allowed to decide on fresh elements, like fruit, vegetables and pastries, but the canned goods are already selected.
For Thanksgiving, The
Salvation Army is handing out boxes donated by Helping Harvest in Reading; each box contains a turkey, sides, and a pumpkin pie. So far, Shurtleff said the organization has given out boxes to 147 families.
The Salvation Army’s Christmas campaign starts on Dec. 16. Helping Harvest will again provide boxes for Shurtleff to give out to families, this time with ham instead of turkey and pecan pie instead of pumpkin.
Shurtleff said there are also toy signups for kids aged 10 and under; parents can come in at an assigned time and get a prepacked box of toys for their children. The list fills up fast, but Shurtleff said she always tries to get toys for every child.
“I never want to send anyone away,” Shurtleff said. “We do our best because we want to make sure kids have something for Christmas.”