Truckload of Good to Benefit Needy: Food Banks in Bucks to Receive Bounty From Wegmans Donation.

By Patrick Lester, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Oct. 17–Food pantries across Bucks County get a windfall with the arrival Tuesday of a supersized meals-on-wheels delivery that is expected to feed thousands.

An 18-wheeled truckload of food donated by Wegmans Food Markets was delivered to the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology in Warwick Township, from where — over the next few days — the food will be distributed to various pantries.

It will provide more than 12,000 meals to low-income families who rely on a network of food banks from Quakertown to Bensalem Township, according to the Bucks County Opportunity Council, the nonprofit distributing the food.

The Wegmans contribution comes at a time when food pantries are preparing to provide holiday meals for the needy.

“We’re excited,” said Gloria Evans, who runs Heaven’s Bounty food pantry at Quakertown Church of the Brethren in Richland Township. “You can never have too much.”

All 31 locations in the Opportunity Council’s food pantry network will get 20 to 27 boxes of food that will include cereal, juice, soup, canned vegetables and other items.

David Ford, the organization’s outreach director, said the pantries, located in what is widely considered an affluent part of the state, have more clients than people might realize.

“A lot of it is the working poor that are working jobs and not making ends meet,” Ford said. The food banks last year provided meals to about 36,000 people from 12,000 homes. That represents 6 percent of the county’s population.

The median family income is nearly $85,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but, “more people are in need as rents go up and medical expenses go up,” said the Rev. David Ryan, past president of the Quakertown Food Pantry at the Bucks County Government Services Center building on Route 309 in Quakertown.

“My sense is that most people we serve are not people starving,” said Ryan, pastor at Quakertown United Methodist Church. “They are people who need that supplemental food to stretch their budget further for rent and] medical services.”

Those who get free food must live in Bucks and earn salaries that don’t exceed federal poverty guidelines. Participants typically get three meals for three days for each member of their family.

Evans, who started Heaven’s Bounty when she fell on tough times in 1997, said her food pantry serves 50 to 60 families each month. Many of the recipients are parents with small children.

The goal of the program, Evans said, is to provide temporary help.

“We don’t want to become the grocery store,” she said. “We don’t want people to become totally dependent on the food bank.

“It’s a sad thing that we live in America and we have to do this.”

Wegmans, whose nearest stores are in Warrington, Bucks County, and Allentown, says it gave out 14 million pounds of groceries to food banks in 2006.

The company operates 71 stores, including 12 in Pennsylvania, and reports annual sales of $4.1 billion.

—–

To see more of The Morning Call, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mcall.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.