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Maine Charity Organizations Struggling to Meet Need

Posted on: Saturday, 17 December 2005, 00:00 CST

By Bangor Daily News, Maine

Dec. 16--Priscilla picked up her family's monthly food box at the Pittsfield Food Bank and carried it to her aging blue station wagon. She slid the box -- containing macaroni, soup, beans, a bag of cookies, a box of cereal, canned vegetables and two packages of meat -- onto the back seat, where her infant son watched from his car seat.

"This is not easy," she admitted, pausing a moment and looking away, "but it is winter, the kids are hungry. What else can I do?

"I've turned to friends before when my kids were hungry," Priscilla said, "but they are all at the same poverty level. The money comes in and [goes] out so quickly."

With a ruptured disk in her back, there is little work that Priscilla, the single parent of two teenagers and a 1-year-old, can do. She recently lost her 30-hour-a-week volunteer job at the town hall, which had allowed her to retain state aid. The loss will erase Christmas for her family.

She's not alone.

More and more Mainers are working harder and falling further behind, and charitable organizations and state agencies are fighting harder to keep up.

Heating costs have increased 27 percent nationally.

Food costs have risen 3 percent to 4 percent.

Giving is on the decline, and the change is so pervasive nationally that economists have dubbed it "donor fatigue."

Although the situation seems to be better in Maine, many shelters and other charitable agencies are reporting deep shifts in giving patterns this year. Food banks say that although donations remain level, community need is rising. The situation was critical at Thanksgiving.

Agencies in Maine began waiting for turkeys, canned goods and money to arrive in early October.

"It just didn't come," one Pittsfield food pantry worker said recently. "We waited and hoped, but it didn't come."

Have the natural tragedies of the past five months -- Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, killer tornadoes in the United States, and unprecedented earthquakes in Pakistan -- suctioned the charitable giving right out of Maine?

Food donations over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are down 12 percent in Los Angeles, 30 percent in New York City and more than 50 percent in Milwaukee and Denver, according to America's Second Harvest network, which accounts for 80 percent of the nation's food banks.

This has spurred some bizarre incentives to fill food bank shelves.

In Connecticut, a donation to the state's food bank earns a raffle ticket for the opportunity to push the plunger when a former coliseum is imploded.

In Montana, hunters who donate harvested animals to food banks are entered in a raffle for a new hunting rifle.

Three out of four national agencies that help the poor say it will be harder to do so this holiday season because the need is greater, according to a survey released this fall by Catholic Charities USA.

An October report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 2004 was the fifth consecutive year in which the number of Americans in households at risk of hunger increased. The number of people living in what the USDA calls "food-insecure" households rose to 38.2 million last year, including 13.8 million children.

In Maine, 9.2 percent of families are "food-insecure" -- nearly one in 10. That percentage was 8.7 percent in 1998.

About 17,000 Mainers 65 and older are receiving some level of food stamp benefits, and more than 3,000 of them are at least 80 years old.

In 1991, Bill Rae of Bangor founded Manna Ministries, a nonprofit that provides a soup kitchen, food pantry, food bank, day care, job search skills and a clinic.

"Seventeen percent of the families polled in the Old Town-Orono area need food," Rae said recently. "This is here, now.

"Manna has found itself in the position of providing a safety net in keeping the working poor and people on fixed incomes from becoming homeless," he said.

"Most, if not all, of our guests are one crisis, one paycheck or one doctor's bill from losing their lights, homes or apartments," Rae said.

Manna feeds 150 people a day at its soup kitchen and 240 families a week at its food pantry.

"Those numbers are way up from last year," Rae said. "And the colder it gets, the more increase we are going to see."

Rae said the demographics have changed from last year as well as the numbers. "We are seeing more young families and young individuals and many more elderly," he said.

There will be children in Maine who have no gifts for Christmas. There will be grandfathers and grandmothers who are cold on Christmas Day. And there will be dozens of families whose plates will not be heaped with a season's bounty.

At the Irene Chadbourne Food Pantry on Main Street in Calais, a 9-year-old girl recently spotted a pink cake with a Barbie doll in icing on top. Her eyes lit up. Her mother, Tabitha, said that because of the food pantry, her five children eat four times a day and have snacks.

Tabitha and her husband eat just once a day to make the food donations last.

Even the largest food bank in the state, the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn and Brewer, which last year distributed 8.8 million pounds of food and products to Maine food banks and pantries, is predicting a difficult year ahead and banking on its huge volunteer base for stability.

"So far, we are holding our own, but we anticipate a rough winter," coordinator JoAn Chartier said.

Good Shepherd provides surplus and salvageable foodstuff to 525 agencies, most of them local food banks.

Since most of the products are donated, Chartier said, there is no charge for the food itself. Instead, Good Shepherd charges 16 cents a pound as a maintenance fee, regardless of whether a local food bank is picking up toilet paper or boneless chicken.

That fee represents 50 percent of the bank's operating expenses. "Donations and fundraisers fill the rest of the need," said Chartier.

She said a loss of donations could result in cutbacks, which could mean fewer operating hours, fewer workers or even an increase in the maintenance fee.

Good Shepherd employs 18 full-time and six part-time workers, but Chartier said it is the 350 volunteers that keep it running.

"We are inspired because more than 50 percent of our volunteers qualify to go to a pantry and get free food," she said. "Our biggest donors are our volunteers."

At the end of each three-hour shift, volunteers get one to three boxes of food, depending on eligibility and family size. "They qualify for free food, but they would rather work for it and feel a part of the bigger picture," said Chartier.

Meanwhile, Tabitha's daughter got to take home her pink Barbie cake, and her mother received several bags of canned goods, pasta, other staples and a Christmas turkey.

"The food stamps we get don't cover the month," Tabitha said. "It's only $337 for seven people."

Priscilla in Pittsfield agreed. "Food stamps only last three weeks," she said.

Without area food banks, Tabitha's and Priscilla's children would go hungry. Once that happens, Tabitha predicted that the state would step in.

Not knowing whether it actually could happen, she expressed her fear that "people will lose their children because of hunger."

With the Pittsfield Food Bank, Priscilla said she feels a bit better. "They don't look down on me," she said. "They treat me with respect, not making me feel small or invisible."

Maine appears to be faring better than some states. It is ranked 30th on the "Generosity Index," which is computed annually based on income and donations reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

Research released last month by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, which focused on New England charitable giving, showed that New Englanders consistently gave much more to charities than other regions -- 82 percent in New England compared to 67 percent nationwide.

This Maine tradition of charitable giving is shown in pockets of hope throughout the state.

Dan and Joanne Booth, 2005 United Way of Mid-Maine Campaign co-chairmen in the Waterville area, raised $712,000 in November, well above their goal of $675,000.

Earl Dean of the Pittsfield Food Bank received a surprise donation of 43 turkeys that he will share with families at Christmas.

Through the Community Christmas Project in SAD 53 (Burnham, Detroit and Pittsfield), 125 children will receive four presents each this holiday, donated by workers at local businesses.

At the Emmaus Center in Ellsworth, an adopt-a-family program allows donors to play Santa Claus for area families.

Donations are at a higher level this year than last, said Cindy Gagnon of the Sister Mary O'Donnell Shelter in Presque Isle.

Kennebec Savings Bank in Augusta donated $500 to each of 24 Kennebec County food banks and pantries in December.

"When it comes right down to the local level, to helping your neighbor, people are generous," Dean said.

"Once people know there is a need, they will always give," said Charles Pressey of The Salvation Army in Portland.

Across the state, communities are bracing for what is expected to be an unprecedented number of families in crisis.

When Larry Post, town manager of St. Albans, put together his small community's 2006 budget, he increased general assistance by $4,000. Before the new year even began, Post said, he was "already getting hit hard with fuel costs" because local senior citizens and others just couldn't keep up.

Food bank officials say the problem of struggling families has grown worse since October, resulting in the worst possible scenario: a decrease in food donations and an increase in the number of people who need them.

"We don't have actual demographics," said Earl Dean at the Pittsfield Food Bank. "We just know what we see every day, and we're seeing more, more, more."

Dean, 83, has run the Pittsfield Food Bank for 24 years. Two years ago, his doctor predicted he had only two more years to live. "This is the only thing that keeps me alive," he said of the food pantry, which has become his life's work.

But even Dean thinks it is going to be bad this year. "We have already seen 20 new families," he acknowledged.

The Pittsfield facility serves 115 families a month on the same amount of donated food that it got by on last year when 72 families used the pantry.

Carmella Walton, who has volunteered at the Calais food pantry for 10 years, also is worried. The week before Thanksgiving, Walton helped give away 744 meals in two hours.

Although area businesses and people have been generous, Walton is uncertain about January. Ten new applicants have appeared at the food pantry in just the last two weeks, representing a cross section of residents, from single mothers with one or two children to senior citizens who live alone.

"The average senior citizen lives on $539 a month," she said. "That is a very scary thought."

When asked about the holidays at her Pittsfield home, Priscilla stopped while carrying her food bank supplies to her aging station wagon, and looked down at the ground.

"Christmas? That's a hard subject to talk about," Priscilla confided. "The children will get hardly anything."

By Diana Graettinger and Sharon Kiley Mack

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Copyright (c) 2005, Bangor Daily News, Maine

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Source: Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine)

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