Food Pantries are the first line of defense against hunger.
The truth is that food pantries are not perfect. Not anywhere near perfect, actually. And, they never will be. How can they be near perfect when there is often not enough food in the pantry to feed the many people shopping there?
But, they get to be as near to perfection as they do because the people who work in them are often retired, elderly volunteers who really care and have the time to put in extra effort.
And, how can they be perfect when the food is mostly donated food that was on its way to the landfill before some enterprising person snapped it up for the hungry people in the line?
And, the truth is that food pantries, to a certain extent, are neighbors helping neighbors. This is a wonderful attitude.
The positive energy is exhibited in this sharing wonderful world, indeed. Without these wonderful people and their generous attitudes, people would be starving in this great nation of ours. Food pantries are our first line of defense against hunger.
But, often these food pantries which depend to a great extent on the generosity of individuals simply don’t have enough food. Insufficient is the word used.
Because there is little oversight, there is little control. So, a person shopping at a pantry may get enough to eat or may not. The quality of the food has little oversight. So, the person shopping may be getting food which is all out-of-date, or which is food which cannot be eaten by the person needing the food.
An example of this is the person without teeth. People without teeth are very restricted in what they can take because they can’t chew many foods.
Another example is the diabetic person who can only eat certain types of food without health problems.
And, all quality issues aside, there may simply be insufficient food in the pantry to feed the number of people shopping even though a pantry is the first line of defense against hunger.
Personally, in the Good Neighbor Food Pantry, I had a morning when I ran out of food. I simply didn’t have enough food to give to the people. This was an experience I’ll never forget.
Finally, the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program people sent down guidelines requiring that pantries serve a three-day-supply of food for each person in the household. HPNAP guidelines required that pantries serve fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables. Pantries were asked to serve whole grain breads and low-fat milk.
This was a wonderful thing which I applauded enthusiastically when I learned about the guideline. However, it was challenging to the many pantries without freezers and refrigerators.
The truth is that pantries everywhere simply don’t have enough food to meet the demand.
What can we do about this? For starters, we can realize that pantries are our first line of defense against hunger in this country.
Then, we can follow up this realization with food donations throughout the year.
One can of something every week helps over time. Find a pantry and give to help those in need. Do you plant a garden in the summer? Add a row for your pantry!
Thank you for what you are doing for those in need.
I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore – Coming Soon!
IT’S COMING SOON!
After countless reams of computer paper, dozens and dozens of writing classes, three computers and two copiers, the book about hunger is at the publisher’s!
And, I actually heard the word “done” today! I’m ecstatic beyond words!
Somebody else could have done it with only one computer disaster and one copier blow up. But, I never claimed to be a writer.
This endeavor took years. And, it was worth it. I felt this story needed to be told when I started writing it in 2013 and I’m sticking to my opinion. Hunger in America was then and is now a national event which needs to be shared.
A real Woodstock story, “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” tells about the people in the pantry, channels my grandmother, and reveals a few miracles.
I’m proud to say that “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore” will, within days, be available in paperback and eBook editions on Amazon.
I am already scheduling book signings for this book. If you are in the area, I look forward to seeing you at one near you!
You can purchase this book by going to my website at http://www.thurmangreco.com.
Order your copy, and please share this unbelievably exciting news!
Thurman
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Motel 19
Everyone coming to a pantry travels down a path. For many, this journey is a real load lightener. As the finances erode, the house goes. And, of course, when the house goes, everything that was in it goes too.
Furniture, kitchen stuff, toys, clothes, tools, garden implements. By the time a person or family gets to Motel 19, things have slimmed down to a few clothes, a blanket or two, a hot plate, or maybe an electric skillet or microwave.
For the families living in Model 19, the children are usually eligible for the school breakfast and/or lunch program. But, that doesn’t cover eating at home. And, there’s no lunch program for the adults.
So…it’s off to the pantry.
Several families usually pile in a car and come over for an afternoon of pantry shopping. Or, an individual hitch hikes. In order for this trip to succeed, several guidelines to follow will help:
Try to arrive an hour or so before the pantry opens. This makes for a long wait but there’s more of a selection right when the pantry opens. Also, while waiting in line, there’s an opportunity to make new friends and learn a few survival skills if you’re new to the pantry experience.
Bring your own shopping bags. Some pantries don’t have enough of these much needed items.
Bring some ID. Some pantries require much: picture ID, proof of address, proof that other household members exist. This can be a bit tough if you’re homeless. Hint: some pantries require little to no identification
Be prepared to wait in a line. Use this time to meet your line neighbors. They can be helpful if you’re trying to navigate your way through DSS, if you’re being foreclosed upon, need your car repaired, etc.
As you wait in line, try to learn how the pantry works from those around you in the line. You’ll want to know how long you’ll be in the shopping room, what foods are usually on the shelves, what other pantries the people in line shop at, etc.
Don’t be afraid to let people know you’ve never been to a pantry.
Once you find a pantry you can use, go every time you’re allowed. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a pantry in your area which will allow weekly visits. Because pantry shopping takes so much time, shoppers sometimes just don’t go if they still have SNAP card money or if they have a few bucks left over from a paycheck. Your best bet is to go every week.
Why? Most pantries have different food every week and you may miss out on some real savings by not attending regularly.
Pantry shopping requires a totally new approach to cooking. So does cooking with only an electric skillet or microwave.
Some pantries have periodic visits from a nutritionist. Don’t be shy about asking him/her for any tips you might need to help this adjustment a bit easier for you. Nutritionists know a lot about the food you are now trying to cook with and they can answer any questions you might have.
Thanks for reading this blog post.
Please share this article with your favorite social media network.
PS: This book is at the publisher’s now. It will be available SOON! You can order it at http://www.thurmangreco.com.
Thanks,
Thurman Greco
Help the Homeless
The world of people who are homeless may seem very foreign – But, it’s actually very near. We meet people every day who are just like us, only they don’t have a roof over their heads.
We can all find ourselves without a roof when we lose a job. Or, maybe a spouse dies. Possibly an accident which leaves physical disabilities is the cause. In short, all it takes is a personal tragedy.
There are many things we can do to help end homelessness. There are many, many things we can do to help those who are struggling with homelessness.
One easy way we can help is to take a little extra food along when we go out of our home to work or on errands. A few extra sandwiches will help. When a person asks for change, offer him or her a sandwich.
A couple of times each year, gather the clothes you are no longer going to wear and donate them to shelters and pantries providing services to help those who are homeless.
While you gather clothes for the homeless, look at your family’s toys, books, and games and select those that are no longer being used. Children living in shelters have few possessions and will enjoy them.
Can you spare an hour or two? Tutors can make all the difference. Volunteer to tutor children in shelters.
Celebrate your birthday or anniversary and ask the people you invite to bring items for the homeless.
Carry fast food certificates with you when you are going out. Hand them out to people who are homeless.
Hold a food drive and take the food to a shelter or a pantry in your area.
Donate your collectable recyclable cans and bottles to people who are homeless. Donate a bag of groceries to a soup kitchen, shelter, or food pantry.
Volunteer at a food pantry or shelter.
Volunteer your professional services. Lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, and dentists can all use your skills when you volunteer at a pantry or shelter.
Ask your company, church, school to host a fund-raising event for a pantry or homeless shelter. Items of dignity are really needed by the homeless.
Thank you for reading this article!
Please refer this article to your favorite social media network.
Thurman Greco
PS: The hunger book is really moving along. Things just never get finished as quickly as we all wish. Writing a book requires years and years of research and writing. In writing the hunger book, I have gone through thousands and thousands of sheets of paper and three computers. I have spent years and years getting this story moved from an event in my life to a book which will attract you or not in less than two minutes.
Whew!
The Homeless
The homeless have problems just like you and me: employment, health issues, disabilities, domestic violence. They just don’t have a roof over their heads.
Homeless people, families enter food pantries very quietly. They’ve lost their voices. The goal is to melt into the background, get food, and disappear.
There’s an exception to the voicelessness – when the person communicates with beings unknown to the rest of us. One shopper I know has been in another world since before I began working in the pantry in 2005. He communicates in a high, shrill, unknown tongue which I cannot describe. His shrill vowels are punctuated with hard, sharp whistles, clicks, squeaks.
We can all help homeless people in some way. Each of us has talents and skills which can be useful.
DONATE. Homeless people carry their kitchens in their pockets . So much food which we take for granted is just not helpful. Important in the homeless diet is peanut butter and crackers in individually wrapped packages, cereal in self-serve packaging. Fruits and vegetables which can be eaten raw, milk and/or fruit juice in individual containers. Donate these items throughout the year by regularly giving the food to a food pantry in your area which is homlesss friendly.
VOLUNTEER. Pantries everywhere need an extra set of hands to answer mail, drive a truck, serve food, clean up at closing time, send press releases, hold food drives, stock and straighten shelves, deliver food to the home bound.
CLEAN OUT YOUR CLOSETS. Donate clothing, bedding, books, and other gently used items to places where the homeless will have access to them.
SHARE. Do you or someone you know have a garden? Donate the excess to a homeless friendly pantry in your area. When your garden tomatoes get to be too plentiful, there are those in your area who need the food.
PUSH THE ENVELOPE. Contact elected officials about homeless issues in your area. Encourage them to make ending homelessness important in your community.
EDUCATE YOURSELF. Returning veterans have special needs. For one thing, they begin separation from the military homeless.
FIND A JOB. Encourage your church or community to hire a homeless person. Many homeless want to work, have skills, but have trouble finding regular employment.
DO YOU HAVE A SKILL TO SHARE? Contact a local shelter and offer to give classes.
For a time, one of our most trusted volunteer/shoppers was homeless. His partner, Nancy, died and her children didn’t want him in the house they had lived in together for many years. He fought her children for a year with a lawyer, made several trips to court, the whole enchilada.
He finally moved out and ended up homeless for a time. He eventually got housing through a homeless veterans program. I helped him move his clothes and things over to his new apartment in Saugerties.
Homelessness cannot be generalized. Each homeless person is a special personality and has a special situation which s/he deals with. So here’s my rule about homeless people:
IF YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON, YOU’VE SEEN ONE HOMELESS PERSON.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Please share it with your preferred social media network.
BOOK UPDATE: The new hunger book is going to be out soon. The publisher assures me that we’re going to see the book within a month! Hurrah!
Thanks again
Thurman
SNAP
SNAP is important. SNAP will help you if you are having trouble buying groceries.
SNAP is important for your community, too, because when you are able to get food with SNAP, you will have cash available to help pay your rent or buy gas to get back and forth to work.
Have you, or has someone you know, applied for SNAP? SNAP was formerly known as food stamps.. SNAP is about all that’s left in the way of assistance for people because welfare is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking yet again.
If you are having trouble paying for your groceries, now is a good time to apply. If you’ve applied in the past and were denied, maybe you need to apply again. You may, after all, have answered a question incompletely or incorrectly and were denied this benefit. Try again. You might do better this time around, especially if you or someone in your house is disabled or is a senior with medical expenses.
Some people are reluctant to apply for SNAP because they don’t know if they are eligible. Or, maybe they applied in the past but were denied. Many people don’t know how to apply and are overwhelmed by the application. Some people have never heard of SNAP and think of it as food stamps.
One thing: If you work, you need to know how to meet the work requirements.
Some information is needed to successfully apply for SNAP. This information comes in several categories.
Proof of income is necessary. This comes in the form of pay stubs, social security income information.
An identification is needed. This might be a State ID, passport, birth certificate, etc.
Bills help. This will include medical, heating, water, auto, rent.
Your social security number and the numbers of everyone in your household is necessary.
Dependent Care Costs will help. These include day care costs, child support, attendant for disabled adult.
Contact your local Department of Social Services office to arrange for application assistance. If this doesn’t work for you, contact your Office on Aging or Catholic Charities.
SNAP is an important benefit which will help you if you are having trouble buying groceries.
SNAP is important for your community, too, because when you are able to get food with stamps, you will have cash available to help pay your rent or buy gas to get back and forth to work.
SNAP is important for your household because you’ll be able to get more food with your SNAP card and you won’t be hungry anymore.
This translates to better health.
Thank you for reading this blog post.
Please share this article with your preferred social media network.
Please forward this article to anyone and everyone you know who might be able to have a better life with SNAP.
Thurman Greco
This book is being published now and will be available soon!
This book will be going to the publisher before the end of the year.
It’s a Miracle!
This article was written back in 2013 when we got Miriam’s Well up and running. I’m sharing this event with you.
Enjoy!
Lord,
When we drive Miriam’s Well up to the apartment complex, children gather round. Their mothers shop for food.
Lord, I’m so grateful for this truck. It took us exactly thirty-four minutes to design Miriam’s Well at the meeting in my healing space. It took us exactly two weeks to get her together. This truck is a miracle, Lord. When You work a miracle, You arrange for things to work perfectly. I love the perfection of this plan!
We put food in the back of Miriam’s Well, take it to Woodstock Commons, Woodstock Meadows, to the grounds at St. Gregory’s, and over to Tongore Pines, where the people come to shop.
There are no long lines, Lord. There are no waits. People just come to Miriam’s Well, get the groceries they need, visit with one another, and go home to wherever or whatever that is, with the food they need.
Dignity, smiles, positive thoughts, uplifting events. The whole scene is reminiscent of a time at a village well in a Bible story. That’s why we named her Miriam’s Well.
Only You could have done this Lord. You guided our hands, hearts, minds through the entire project.
How can we ever thank You enough Lord?
Amen
Thanks for reading this article!
Please refer this post to your favorite social media network.
P S – The manuscript has gone to the publisher. I look forward to sharing this story with you in the coming weeks. Thanks so much for your interest!
Thurman Greco
Serving the Hungry with an Understanding Heart
O Lord, You are a God of Abundance.
Allow me to serve the hungry with an open heart.
Give me the courage to distribute food without strings attached when volunteers are serving the hungry.
May I never need to keep score.
Give me the physical strength to keep the shelves of the pantry stocked with as much food as we can pack on them.
Grant me the emotional stamina to understand the many needs of the shoppers.
Never let me get so tired that I forget we are all one group: Yours
At the food pantry, hunger is hunger. It doesn’t matter what size the household is, what size the car is, or what or where the family calls home. At the food pantry, no one has to complete an application shop. What’s important is that the person is in the line and there is food for that person and his/her household.
Lord, You send over the food, You send over the people and You send over enough food for everyone with some left over. This happens every pantry day on every week. People are always welcome. Lord, You bring people together through the food pantry.
Thank You for all You do for the hungry.
Amen
Thank you for reading this blog.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco – Woodstock, New York
It’s Celebration Time! – Hunger Alleviation Today
It’s been a looong time everyone! I’m offering an update today because the book is finished and going to press soon. It’s been months, eons maybe, since I’ve posted on this blog and I’m grateful to be back. It’s as if I’ve been living in a cave – a writing cave.
When a person purchases a book, the attention put to that purchase may certainly have been less than five minutes, maybe even two minutes. Writing a book can take years. This book has been in the making since 2005. The manuscript has been foremost in my life since 2013.
And, if anything, the issues are more relevant now than they were in 2005.
For the past months I’ve put my full attention to the book because hunger alleviation is extremely important not only to me personally but to our nation in general.
Even if people don’t realize it.
But, yes, hunger alleviation is important because we have many, many people in our country who are not getting enough to eat.
There are many hunger prevention programs working to feed people who otherwise would not have enough to eat. The holidays are coming. Please think about sharing what you have with those who have less.
And, now, act on those wonderful thoughts of generosity. Join the hunger alleviation movement!
Thanks for reading this blog post. Thank you for your support of the hungry in our nation and around the world.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Caring Hands
Kingston, New York is a rapidly gentrifying and trendy trendy little town in New York State. Almost every day I see new neighbors in this community. They’ve found just the perfect weekend apartment and are ecstatically, euphorically furnishing it with just the perfect finds. In short, they are in love with Kingston!
In their giddiness, they have may not have yet noticed the Caring Hands Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen. Or maybe they have. Maybe they see that one of the most important things about Kingston is that the residents care for one another. This attitude helps make Kingston what it is – a community we all want to be part of.
2017 is turning out to be a tough year for food pantries in general and Caring Hands Food Pantry in Kingston, New York in particular. But, Caring Hands isn’t just a food pantry. It’s a soup kitchen, and a warming center with a recovery and twelve-step program. As if that’s not enough, they’ve got a free legal clinic, too.
Volunteers at Caring Hands, under the direction of the Rev. Darlene L. Kelley at the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church, work hard as they put their beliefs into action daily. Almost 600 meals are served weekly in the soup kitchen. Over 3,000 households receive groceries monthly.
Children, the elderly, families, veterans, and the ill are all welcome at Caring Hands. The goal is to help people in need help themselves. The message of God’s transforming love is spread throughout the community from the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church as it ripples out in waves.
It is easy for you to be a part of this message. You don’t have to move to Kingston. You don’t have to attend the church there. You don’t even have to know anyone in the area. All you need to do is give a little … or a lot … of whatever you can share.
- Sending a check always helps. Caring Hands always needs money.
- Sending a gift certificate always helps, too. Did someone give you a gift certificate that that you’ll probably never use? Well, now is a good time to use it. Send it on over.
- Extra time is extremely valuable. If you live in the area, you can be a part of this miracle when you volunteer. Your gift of presence will be greatly appreciated.
- Hold a food drive. Gifts of food are always, always needed. If you don’t live in the area, hold a food drive anyway and donate the cans and boxes of food to a food pantry in your area.
- Call an elected representative and lobby for the poor and hungry in your area. Persuade this elected official to be generous with funds for those around us who do not have everything they need to live a healthy life.
- Your prayers and kind thoughts are always welcome. Those at Caring Hands as well as at other food pantries throughout our country are working hard to bring food and love to a broken community. They need your support.
Caring Hands has a mailing address to send your check and/or gift certificates: CARING HANDS
c/o THE CLINTON AVENUE UMC
P. O. Box 1099
Kingston, New York 12402.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Hopefully you’ll share it with your favorite social media outlet.
With this blog posted article comes an apology for not having posted often enough in the past months. This doesn’t mean that I don’t care or that I’m no longer interested in hunger. To the contrary. I’m deeply involved in bringing my next book to my publisher. And, it’s about hunger in America.
Thurman Greco
