In the midst of the holiday season, many turn to charities like local food pantries or homeless shelters to give back, according to Shannon Smith, food services coordinator at Allied Churches of Alamance County in Burlington. During the rest of the year, these organizations rely on donations and occasional food drives, typically through area churches, to stock their shelves, which is oftentimes not enough.
A little more than a 10-minute drive east of Elon University’s campus, people in lower-income neighborhoods suffer from what is known as food desert, areas with affordable and healthy produce shortages stemming from a lack of local grocery stores, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. For food pantries located within these zones, the holiday season is often a time of increased drives and donations they don’t normally see during other times of year, Smith said.
According to the staff at Allied Churches, food drives provide periods where the pantries’ shelves are fully-stocked, but inventory is not always steady. Smith said pantries need more frequent donations throughout the year to make sure visitors get the help they need.
Mike Owens is the operations manager at Southern Alamance Family Empowerment Food Ministry (SAFE) in nearby Graham, North Carolina, which is working with local partners to raise awareness for their cause and increase donations year-round.
Averaging 50 families per week, Owens estimated that SAFE provides assistance to about 200 families a month and 2,400 a year. SAFE occasionally benefits from drives, fundraisers, personal donations and help from partner churches to provide their food services. Most of the food, though, comes from donated funds or the volunteers themselves.
“Two volunteers go out weekly and buy groceries and buy food,” Owens said. “We don’t get enough support by food drives to support our ministry. We’re on average open seven days a month, basically, and so we don’t have enough given to us just off food drives to support that.”
According to Owens, the volunteers at SAFE pride themselves on providing more than just basic necessities to the people they help.
“If they’re having trouble with their finances, we try to help them,” he said. SAFE does more than just provide food. Owens said SAFE is there to help expand opportunities, so the volunteers sit down with each family, listen, evaluate each individual’s situation and figure out which programs are best suited for them.
Also located in Graham is DreamAlign Ministries — a company that provides food assistance for six months to families who apply. After six months of assistance, according to executive director Jesse London, DreamAlign looks at their situation to see what else they could be doing to “better help them back on their feet.”
According to London, DreamAlign Ministry helps around 500 or 600 families a month through the ministry and its outreach services. Those in need come from multiple counties across the triad area. In addition to Alamance, families have come from Orange, Guilford, Caswell, Person, Chatham and Rockingham counties, he said. Everything donors give goes straight into DreamAlign’s services, and London attributes the ministry’s success to God.
In Burlington, Alamance County Community Services Agency (ACCSA) provides emergency food sources to local residents as opposed to a typical food pantry or soup kitchen, and also benefits from local food drives and initiatives.
According to a handout highlighting the programs that ACCSA offers, “The Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP) is designed to reduce the number of families or individuals who suffer from the lack of food as a result of an economic related crisis.”
In addition to this emergency assistance, the agency has worked to provide alternative sources of produce and other products in addition to food pantries. According to Executive Director Wendy Covington, they try to alleviate dilemmas that come with living in a food desert through local initiatives like farmers’ markets and community produce markets.
Covington agreed that their food closet was always fullest during the holiday season. She emphasized that even though ACCSA does not run a weekly or daily food pantry, they are always in need of donations in order to be able to continue providing emergency assistance to local families.