Food pantries: Hunger happens year-round

Dorothy Smatresk,  Network of Religious Communities

By Autumn Evans
and Melissa Zimmermann

Bengal News West Reporters

       For a person struggling with hunger, the holiday season offers much-needed relief. For a while, at least, the shelves at local food pantries become full with donations. But they won’t stay that way for long.

Beginning in November, charities such as food pantries see an increase in donations. However, the volume of donations drops dramatically in January, even though officials at local food pantries say hunger does not end with the holidays.

Why do people give more freely at the end of the year, when hunger strikes year-round? 

At holiday season, people take stock in their benefits in life,  said John Abbarno, a sociology professor at D’Youville College whose studies focus on ethical issues related to homelessness.   

        “There is no shortage of news about people suffering, whether from poverty or illness of various sorts," Abbarno said, "and if people are thankful for their health and reasonably good fortune, they feel that others not so fortunate should receive the effects of the good will.” 

He added some alternate reasons might   be that people derive satisfaction from helping others or that donated money might be tax-deductible, which could be beneficial at the end of the tax year.

Of course, for the organizations running Buffalo’s food pantries, the explanation is irrelevant. What matters is the result.

“People seem to … notice there’s a holiday coming up, and they think people will have a need for it,” said Eileen Nowak, director of Parish Outreach and Advocacy at Catholic Charities, which has six pantries in Buffalo.  “Obviously, we need it all year long, but that’s when people tend to give more. That’s when the giving spirit seems to come out more.”

Supplies are sometimes plentiful enough to supplement a pantry’s stock past the holidays, according to Joseph Heary, executive director of Friends of Night People.  He said the organization uses the extra donations in the community kitchen and pantry, and they can help bolster supplies for another month or two after the holidays. 

“A lot of the food goes to our community kitchen, so it’s really difficult to quantify families,” he said. “Totally, we will probably serve a combined 7,000 to 8,000 meals. We will provide that much usually during December, and then our pantries may serve somewhere around 150 families per month.”

Nowak, on the other hand, said that despite the increases, “There’s never enough to go around, unfortunately.”

She said the increase isn’t only in donations, because the colder weather brings in more people in need as well.

“We usually see people that maybe were managing before, who were able to get to the store, no longer can, or are getting a little nervous because the weather’s starting to blow in,” she said.

On average, Catholic Charities serves about 4,000 individuals each Thanksgiving and Christmas, but compounded with the chance of otherwise financially stable people falling into an unexpected crisis, such as having to support a sick family member, Nowak said they could end up serving more people than expected. 

“The average person falls down on some hard luck, and we’re there to help,” she said.

She stressed the importance of ensuring food is available to anyone who needs it.

“You can be homeless, and people can find some kind of shelter, and sometimes it’s poor shelter,” Nowak said. “But you always need food.”