Fresh lettuce, collard greens, onions, corn and potatoes.
Not necessarily the kind of fare you’d expect to find in a food pantry grocery bag, but Raynham resident Cheryl Schondek is setting her sights high as she works hard to help feed more than half a million hungry residents across eastern Massachusetts.
“We’ve acquired 47 million pounds of food so far this year and 25 percent of that was fresh produce. We’re very proud of that and it continues to grow,” said Schondek, the vice president of food acquisition at the Greater Boston Food Bank.
Schondek, who joined GBFB in May, is drawing on her 29 years of experience in purchasing and merchandising at Shaw’s as she works with wholesalers, retailers and donors to acquire the most nutritious food possible at the least cost.
“It’s incredibly rewarding. The need is so vast. There are people who have to choose between paying their rent, fuel, medical and grocery bills. We’re trying to help them put food on the table,” Schondek said.
Schondek said she’s a people person, who believes in what she’s doing and isn’t afraid to approach vendors she used to purchase food from asking for donations. And very often, they give with open arms. They want to make a difference, she said.
“Vendors will say to me, ‘I’ve been very fortunate in life and X percent of my product will go to the Food Bank’,” Schondek said.
The Greater Boston Food Bank is a non-profit organization that supplies its 550 local member agencies, including food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens with about 78 percent of the food they distribute to the public, GBFB Public Relations Coordinator Erin Caron said.
Those agencies include the Food Basket in Raynham; Saint Thomas Aquinas in Bridgewater; My Brother’s Keeper in Easton; the Cupboard of Kindness in Norton; and Our Daily Bread, St. Vincent de Paul and the Coyle Cassidy High School pantry in Taunton.
Privately donated food accounts for 52 percent of the food distributed by GBFB, Caron said. The food bank also receives food from the USDA and purchases food using monetary donations and state funding.
Most states provide no such funding, Caron said. In those states, food banks have to scramble to make up the difference or their agencies are forced to deliver less food relief.
Not surprisingly, demand for food assistance increased as the economy declined over the past few years, Caron said.
“The new face of hunger is the middle class, working families, students and veterans,” Caron said.
It takes an annual income of about $73,000 for a family of four in Suffolk County to be self-sufficient. But a family of four earning more than $44,000 doesn’t qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, more commonly known as food stamps, she said.
“We call that the meal gap,” Caron said.
And they try to fill it. But it’s an uphill battle.
Between 2005 and 2009, the number of Americans facing food insecurity went up by 23 percent according to “Hunger in America,” a national survey, she said.
Caron expects the number to go up again when results are issued in 2014, she said.
Food insecurity is defined as not having consistent access to food, in other words, not always knowing where the next meal will come from, Caron said.
Schondek has seen the face of hunger up close.
She spent the summer visiting food pantries from Harwich to Bridgewater. Her husband Peter, a math teacher at Raynham Middle School, and their two daughters, Christine and Angela, pitched in as well, volunteering in Fall River and Dorchester.
“It’s very eye-opening. You can’t make an assumption it’s a homeless person. It’s in our own backyards. Folks are going to bed hungry, waking up hungry, going to school hungry,” Schondek said.
“It’s very humbling and it makes me want to go out and get more food. It motivates me,” she said.