The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Oneida Food Pantry, Dunkin' dunk on local hunger
Oneida, N.Y. — Oneida’s Dunkin’ Donuts store has teamed with a local church, Church on the Rock, to combat hunger in northeastern Madison County and southwestern Oneida County.
Dunkin’, 213 Genesee St., has recently undergone an interior makeover with the hope of attracting new customers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The store has offered a drawing to customers. Winners of the drawing, a total of 100 customers, will receive a cup of coffee a week for one year.
New York Dunkin’ State Director Mark Hall said customers are encouraged to drop off non-perishable food items at the store.
All donations will go to Church On the Rock (COR).
“We remade the Oneida store, a Nextgen remake, last July, and it was a little hard at first because of COVID,” Hall said. “Now we want to reflect our company mission statement and reach out to the community.”
The donation event was only for last Thursday but the store continues to seek ways to help local communities. Food donations were not required for the drawing.
The COR food pantry is located at 164 Madison Street and is open Tuesdays through Thursdays from noon until two p.m. They also host a community dinner on the third Thursday of each month. The pantry is staffed with volunteers who prepare and serve food and handle clean-up.
“We want to bless the Oneida community. We have a good time while serving,” pantry volunteer and part-time church speaker Faith Musacchio said.
The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of access to enough nutritionally adequate food for all members of a household to live an active, healthy lifestyle.
Poverty is not the only measure of food insecurity. Low-income working households sometimes need to choose between food purchases and paying medical, electric and housing bills.
The Food Bank of Central New York and the Northern Country conducted a survey in 2017. The survey found approximately 178,160 food insecure people in its 11-county service area.
Oneida County was recently ranked as the twelfth-highest county regarding food insecurity. The county has a 12.2 percent rate of its population at risk (the New York average is 11.9 percent). That’s a total of 28,440 food-insecure persons.
Oneida County has a child food insecurity rate of 20.4 percent (the New York NY average is 17.9 percent). That’s a total of 10,160 foodinsecure children.
“There’s a lot of suffering people out there,” Hall said. “I remember paying $300 in rent per month. Now these younger folks have to pay, like a thousand dollars in rent. I don’t know how people make it these days.”
COR Outreach Director Stuart Houck has run the food pantry for eight years. During that time the church has established connections with the food bank and a number of local grocers. They work together to help feed Oneida’s hungry.
“We have a special relationship with Walmart, Aldi’s, Grand Union and other stores,” Houck said. “They provide us with breads, pastries, and other food the community needs. We also get donations from the Central New York Food Bank.”
Houck said the pantry feeds 35 families a week. “We have families with as many as nine members and we also have the smaller groups-the ones, two- and three-member families,” Houck said.
The number was higher during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We were feeding about fifty families a week until recently, because of COVID,” Houck said. “Now the numbers are back to where they were before, about thirty-five families a week.”
COR’S food pantry expands beyond Oneida’s borders.
“We are a combination local food bank and an emergency food bank,” Houck said. “We can prepare emergency food packages for people who come to us from out of Oneida, and then direct them to a food bank close to where they live.”
COR also has clothing available to those interested. The members of the COR food pantry want to bring a message of hope as they meet the practical needs of the Oneida area.
“We can give people food, clothing, and furniture,” Houck said. “We also want to give them Jesus.”