By Matt Chiappardi, Special Writer
In the bitter cold of a January evening, people were coming directly to the FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties’ Neptune headquarters looking for meals, Executive Director Susan Kelly said this week.
”They thought we were a food pantry,” she said.
”You’re starting to see this a lot, and you can’t judge the guy who comes up driving a Lexus. Maybe he lost his job a few months ago,” Ms. Kelly added.
The food bank isn’t a pantry. The folks there don’t normally distribute meals to individuals, but are sources of the food to the 271 local charities that do that work.
The people who came by looking for food, did get some, Ms. Kelly said. And the fact that individuals are starting to look wherever they can to keep themselves and their families fed underscores how much work charity providers of food have to do in a faltering economic climate, she added.
”This December we saw a huge increase in need and it’s not dropping,” Ms. Kelly said.
Normally, demand at food pantries levels off after Thanksgiving and Christmas, after the large food drives, but this season it continued to rise as the winter marched on, she said.
In December, the food bank had to provide 200,000 more pounds of food to charities than it did the same month in 2007, she said. While numbers aren’t yet available for January, the demand has been about the same as the calendar turned, she added.
”We have enough food for our charities, but we’re taking it out by the truckload every day,” Ms. Kelly said.
As a result, she added, the food bank is planning to put together a fundraiser to buy a bigger truck. And, with the future looking so volatile, the organization, which normally does its ordering by quarter, is now looking ahead on a month-to-month basis.
”We can’t predict what is going to happen. I’m not being glib, but I’m not seeing things getting any better soon,” Ms. Kelly said.
At one of the food pantries the bank serves, things indeed seem to be getting worse.
At the Allentown Community Food Pantry, run by the Allentown Presbyterian Church, the demand for food has been more than triple what it was one year ago, said the deacon who runs the facility.
”We’ve never run into this before,” said Arthur Bokor.
”Now, all of sudden we’re running out of food. We can’t keep up,” he added.
Mr. Bokor said that normally around this time a year, the pantry serves about a dozen people a week. This year, that rate has jumped to about half a dozen to a dozen people each day, he said.
”Even before we got to the holidays, our cupboard was bare,” Mr. Bokor said.
The pantry managed to get replenished through donations from congregations and neighboring churches, but Mr. Bokor said that even church-giving is down, making the problem worse.
”Each week we’re seeing less money. The congregation is hurting and it’s a snowball effect,” Mr. Bokor said.
”The poor people who don’t have food to eat are going to be suffering the most,” he added.
In Neptune, Ms. Kelly says she is aware of the problem and is looking to government support in order to help solve it. She said she plans to call food bank directors across the country in order to ensure food assistance is earmarked in any economic stimulus package passed by Congress.
The food bank receives about 40 percent of its funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she said. And while federal food assistance historically drops off after the holidays, this year the trend is bucking history, she added.
In the meantime, she said she’s hoping that the food bank can get through the tough times with some increased donations either directly to the organizations or to the local charities.
Faced with the same frustrations, Mr. Bokor is hoping for the same results.
”Our community is pretty well-off; a lot of people still have jobs,” he said. “They might not know we even have a food pantry, but if they did I’m sure they’d be gracious enough to donate money or food.”
Anyone wishing to donate money or food to the Allentown Community Food Pantry is asked to send donations to Allentown Presbyterian Church at 20 High St., Allentown, or call 609-259-7289. Donations to the FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties can be sent to 3300 Route 66, Neptune or by calling 732-918-2600.

