Canned goods, pasta and bread.
Those are examples of gifts given this holiday season that won’t just fill a stocking. They’ll fill an entire kitchen.
Volunteers at Storehouse Community Food Pantry have been helping make ends meet for people for a dozen years. For the price of time, not money, the working poor can put food on the table, thanks to their efforts. And in this community, volunteers say, donations can’t come in fast enough.
“It’s lost jobs, not enough hours at work, or they’re working but not making the money they used to make,” volunteer Pam Gee said last week to describe the face of the working poor in Vicksburg. “It’s the kinds of things people can’t plan for.”
Donations of dry goods and only the best-kept refrigerated foods move fast and furious these days out of the pantry’s little store at 907 South St., near Monroe Street. Volunteers have stats to bear, too — Mississippi is tops in the nation in “food insecurity” at 22.3 percent, according to the nonprofit Feeding America. Food insecurity refers to not knowing where one’s next meal will come from. Warren County’s rate by itself is 22.6 percent, the ratings show. Also, pantry volunteers say they were 13.7 percent busier in fiscal 2014 than last year, doling out food to 4,342 people.
Rules are attached to the charity. Families and individuals must show photo ID and a Social Security card to receive food, as well as explain to volunteers what led to their food emergency. Recipients are allowed three visits a year. Sometime next year, the pantry plans to participate in a national charity-tracker database to weed out any fraud.
Past news reports about the pantry chronicle how fast it goes, even when volunteers supplement their shelves with discounted items from a local grocer and donations from businesses. “We literally have tons of food, which sounds like a lot. But, two months later, it’s gone,” president Charles Calhoun said in November.
In a nation where the unemployed are undercounted if they’re not actively looking, it’s tough to gauge the size of the poor. Throw in the market-driven prices of dairy and meat products, and it’s easy to see segments of low-wage workers going without a square meal more often than they should.
They’re not in the phone book, but they’re online, at www.vicksburgfoodpantry.org. They’re open Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to noon and Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. There’s every indication your donation this Christmas will go to someone in need.