You’re not a doctor. But here’s how you can help save lives, right now | Editorial

The condition of food banks throughout New Jersey is sturdy but strained, as the intrepid workers at these sites continue to stare down the menace of the coronavirus with risks and shortages threatening to red-line.

That doesn’t mean that all the pantries, kitchens, shelters, and other feeding programs will hold up against the rising tide of demand, however, so we must help fortify what could soon be a fraying safety net.

The need for vigilance, particularly in the Covid-19 era, is reflected by the agonizing math: One in 9 New Jerseyans are food insecure, including 1 in 6 children — a total of 900,000 neighbors in all. If just one food bank cannot keep its doors open for a few days — or if just one distribution site in its orbit cannot keep serving its community — people will feel the impact as profoundly as a gut punch.

These are the challenges the banks are currently facing, as need follows the soaring trajectory of state unemployment:

Provisions are shrinking everywhere. CEO Carlos Rodriguez of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey reports that the increase in demand for many of the 1,000 sites stocked by his powerhouse has grown as high as 50 percent since the crisis began. “It’s driven mostly by the increase in unemployment,” he said. “People can’t wait for SNAP or unemployment benefits as they become available. Families have to eat today.”

Sites throughout the state are reporting a critical drop in “rescue food” — that’s what they call the produce and meat donated by supermarkets each day — because there just isn’t as much left over.

Restaurants that were donating their excess inventory in March are mostly shuttered in April.

Many volunteers, particularly those in their gentle years, must stay home, forcing pantries to serve more people with fewer hands.

And revenue has cratered because of cancelled fund-raisers, postponed food drives, and a lag in charitable contributions.

“The worst thing is that this doesn’t have a definitive ending, like a natural disaster,” says Adele LaTourette of Hunger Free New Jersey. “We’re barely a month into this and the pantries are already stressed, some beyond their limits. We’re seeing closures among the smaller, faith-based sites run by senior volunteers.”

But even the big facilities already feel the strain. Consider CUMAC, the community juggernaut in downtown Paterson that moves 2 million pounds of food and feeds 50,000 people each year through 77 area distributors. This is the kind of facility that cannot afford to backslide: One out of 4 people they serve are children. In Passaic County, 28 percent of the kids live in poverty, nearly double the state average.

So Mark Dinglasan, CUMAC’s charismatic executive director, takes the temperature of his 22 employees every morning at 9, hands out their masks, and tells them he loves them. Then he spends the rest of his day scrambling to find fresh produce and meat, because the weekly food rescue haul from his supermarket partners has fallen from 17,000 pounds to 11,000.

He has suspended other services (a wonderful client-choice marketplace, job training, etc.) to focus on disaster relief, but this is what keeps him up every night: There are scores of folks that CUMAC cannot reach, homebound seniors and disabled who cannot visit its Ellison Street sanctuary for grab-and-go packages. Have a strategy? Dinglasan welcomes your call.

Marissa Davis, senior program manager for the State YMCA and former director of the NJ Partnership for Healthy Kids in Trenton, cites a similar problem: “There are 13,000 homeless public school students in our state, K through 12,” she explains, “and there is no easy way to reach them when they’re living in motels outside of their school districts.”

And these providers can’t do anything at all if the supply chain dries up, which is why the rest of us must help.

The biggest assist we can give food banks is financial. Just visit FeedingAmerica.org and plug in your zip code to find the one nearest to you.

Food donations are helpful, but for now, it is too time-consuming to organize and repack with staff levels now dwindling, says Patricia Espy of the Center for Food Action. Diapers, baby formula, and paper products are very prized, however, and they’d take any quantity, gratefully.

There are also facilities that can use young and responsible volunteers, but they should ask whether masks and gloves will be provided upon their arrival. And helping a neighbor sign up for SNAP benefits takes only 30 minutes — just visit NJHelps.org or NJOneApp and follow the links.

We’re facing a period of great deprivation for our most vulnerable, but this state has an abundance of compassion and heart. This would be the time to show it.

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