Pantry feeds 300, needs donations
Car after car lined up with trunk lids open for the Exeter Area Food Pantry’s grocery giveaway.
Within two hours on Wednesday, April 22, the food was gone.
“We had 299 families today,” volunteer Greg Galtere, an Exeter Township supervisor and retired school principal, said of the emergency distribution.
The all-volunteer nonprofit pantry is based at Reformation Lutheran Church, 3670 Perkiomen Ave., and supplies needy families in the 19606 and 19508 ZIP codes. An average of 190 families are served with once-a-month distribution, but the need has increased since the start of Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is the third time we are doing a drive-by distribution,” said volunteer Jack Williams. “The last time we had 283 families, including 100 new families. There are so many new faces and that is the heartbreaking part.”
Due to the volume of cars, April 8 and Wednesday’s drive-by distributions were moved to the Exeter Township-owned Promenade at 3900 Perkiomen Ave.
Thirty volunteers help direct vehicles and load groceries into the waiting cars on the parking lot, Williams said.
The pantry, which works with Helping Harvest, formerly the Greater Reading Food Bank, plans to continue offering two monthly drive-by distributions to provide food for those in need while maintaining social distancing as long as the stay-at-home order is in place, Galtere said.
Exeter’s food pantry is supported solely by individual contributions, local business sponsorships and fundraisers, the biggest of which is the annual Hack Away at Hunger golf tournament at the townshipowned Reading Country Club, he said.
Galtere said last year’s tournament raised more than $11,000 to support Berks area food pantries. More than $7,000 of the total was earmarked for the Exeter pantry.
The 11th annual tournament is scheduled for July 17, but Galtere fears it may have to be canceled, postponed or altered due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am a realist,” he said.
“I think social distancing is going to continue for a while.”
He is asking would-be sponsors to consider donating now even though the future of the tournament is in question.
Most sponsors give to the tournament to support the hunger cause, he said, and not for the recognition. Even if the tournament must be canceled, that cause remains, he said.