Serving those in need
By now, most people are growing tired of leftover turkey.
The roasted bird so many of us looked forward to with mouth-watering delight on Thanksgiving Day turns into just so many leftover meals before we’re ready for something completely different.
For a growing number of people in the community, finding that something different is a difficult challenge, to say the least. A bare cupboard is an everyday fact of life.
It’s a sad fact that people go hungry in the Spokane Valley. Every day.
Thanksgiving is a harvest festival celebrating an abundance of food and the fruits of a summer’s labor. Its symbol is the cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty – a horn-shaped wicker basket overflowing with fruits and vegetables.
It’s seemed that way at the food bank at Spokane Valley Partners this week, where there were turkeys aplenty and shelves bursting with donations to help a segment of the area population that grows longer with each up tick on the price of a gallon of gasoline, a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.
When you’re working hard to stretch every dollar, every penny spent on one staple means one less penny available to spend on another necessity.
“For many people, there is no such thing as discretionary income,” food bank director Barbara Bennett said. “They face choices: Do I put $5 of gas in my tank so I can get to work, or do I fill half of my prescription for medicine? When it costs 50 cents more to get to work every day, you can’t go in and ask for a raise and you wouldn’t get one if you did.”
Programs like the food bank, which serves the Spokane Valley, try to fill in.
The Thanksgiving season helps out some focus on the year-around problem. Turkey drives, church food drives and generous personal donations help fill the need for the holiday.
“We were fortunate this year to have a turkey for every family,” Bennett said the day after the Thanksgiving goods were dispersed. “If you saw us before we started, our shelves were filled.
“The problem is that we’ll be open again next week and we’ll need food then, too. Right now I have some pumpkin left over and we’ll put that away for Christmas.”
This year, Bennett figures the food bank will have helped feed 10,000 people.
“It’s up,” she said. “This year, for Thanksgiving, we helped about 800. Our average has been about 700.”
The calls were still coming in at the food bank the day after all the food was handed out. Next week it returns to its regular schedule, open Wednesday from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., with a half-hour break from 1-1:30 p.m. Special arrangements can be made for people who work Wednesdays by calling 928-7769.
“We’ve been fortunate,” Bennett said. “Some of the schools and churches have shifted their food drives to different times of the year to help even out the supply. We have the Plant-a-Row program where growers will bring in fresh fruits and vegetables from their gardens to help out during the summer and fall. And we have some very generous benefactors who help out without ever asking for recognition.
“But our food needs are on-going. The universal gift is money. If we have a need, and we have money available, we can go buy what we need when we need it.”
The food bank acts as a clearing house of information and offers programs to help stretch food dollars. There is budget counseling available, and the food bank offers cooking classes to teach people how to stretch the food they have.
“When we started that program, I thought we would offer it a couple times and it would be over, we wouldn’t need it anymore,” Bennett said. “We’re in our 11th year with it now.”
In many ways, the classes teach the old-fashioned way of cooking our parents and grandparents.
“We have people who come in and say that they don’t have time to cook,” Bennett said. “But the truth is, we don’t have time not to. For the price of a couple cans of chili to feed one or two people, for example, we can show you how to make a pot of chili to feed eight.”
Cooking classes are offered at four different times on Wednesdays: 10 a.m., noon, 2 and 4 p.m. A Russian-speaking cooking class is held Thursdays at 12:30 p.m.
For those in need, Bennett said, the food bank tries to make the process as welcoming and unimposing as possible.
“It takes a while before people will come into the food bank,” she said. “They’re afraid it’s going to be like those old black-and-white pictures of people standing in bread lines. It’s not like that at all.
“We’re here to help.”