Print this Article
Email this Article
A year ago, the Cape Cod Times ran a story on the front page about local hunger and the struggle of food pantries to keep up with demand. Here at the Cape Cod Foundation, we wondered what changes had occurred, a year after the story was written. The news is not good.
“We’re breaking records with clients,” said Patti Watson, assistant director of The Family Pantry of Cape Cod in Harwich. In October, the pantry set a new record in the food bank’s 22-year history for food distributed, a 24 percent increase over last year. That figure was 40 percent higher than 2005. “The demand is disconcerting,” Watson said.
It should be disconcerting to all of us. If you’re one of the people who can’t believe hunger exists in a beautiful place like Cape Cod, with its reputation as a carefree summer playground, think again. Times are tough for a lot of people and getting tougher. But our community is also generous in times of need. Local residents, food pantries, and donors are helping to make a difference. One is the Cape Cod Hunger Network, a coalition of Cape food pantries and other agencies.
Brenda Swain, co-chair of the Cape Cod Hunger Network and director of the Falmouth Service Center, which offers a food bank, said the center distributed 1,050 Thanksgiving baskets, an 18 percent increase from last year — and last year’s had stood as a record high. The demand could have felt overwhelming, Swain said, if not for the community response. Recently the center was quickly running out of cereal and Swain put out the word for basic food contributions, in addition to the usual holiday needs. “That email message reverberated out over the Internet and essentially went viral within the Falmouth/Upper Cape community. The response was tremendous,” Swain said.
Whether you call it hunger or food insecurity, not having enough to eat is easier to understand if you examine the roots. The Greater Boston Food Bank’s “Harvest” newsletter publicized a landmark study that showed how many families in eastern Massachusetts are going without regular meals because they can’t afford enough food. The meal gap is huge, the story stated.
Furthermore, 47 percent of people in need cannot receive government benefits, such as food stamps, because their household income is more than twice that of the federal poverty level, which is $22,350 a year for a family of four.
“From our numbers, it’s clear that hunger has permeated the middle class,” Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, told the newsletter. “The concept of hunger is no longer synonymous with poverty.”
Mary Anderson, executive director of The Family Pantry of Cape Cod and co-chair of the Cape Cod Hunger Network, said she is seeing more clients who don’t consider themselves poverty stricken. “It’s another layer of people we’re seeing,” she said. More than two-thirds of the pantry’s clients are from homes where someone is working, and sometimes two people are working, Anderson said. “Maybe someone’s gotten laid off, or they’re barely making it. It’s very sobering.” The impact of the area’s lack of affordable housing adds another dimension.
The good news is, many are already doing everything they can. At the Cape Cod Foundation, we hear of scores of small groups, from yacht clubs to high school classes, who are helping eliminate hunger. If you are an individual who wants to help, get to know your local food bank and find out what it needs — volunteers, food donations, cash. (Cash is always good, especially since the Falmouth Service Center, The Family Pantry, and others often buy their food from the Greater Boston Food Bank, where $1 buys $5 worth of food.)
I encourage you to get to know your community and give what you can. You’ll help make the holidays nicer for a lot of people and help protect the beauty inherent in Cape Cod — inside and out.
Elizabeth Gawron is president of the Cape Cod Foundation in Yarmouthport.