Linda Marsal, Director for the Salem UMC food bank

Special to the Philanthropy Journal

By Amelia Currin

“I’ve worked hard all my life. Fortunately, my house is paid off and I have social security, but I have bills to pay and grandchildren to raise, and so that little bit of money isn’t enough in this current economy to put food on the table,” says 62 year old Ada Lynch*, a resident of Simpson, North Carolina. Ms. Lynch’s story unfortunately, isn’t uncommon. It’s easy to get lost in the broad definition of the word hunger and forget the faces and the names behind the issue.

When considering systemic hunger in America, one may automatically think of socio-economics and those persons living outside of the middle class; however, this may not necessarily be the case. Given the fact that there is a certain amount of shame associated with seeking help to put groceries on the table, one should not assume that this is necessarily a class issue. There is a blurring of the line between poverty and lower- to middle-class persons in need of food assistance. According to the Food Research & Action Center, families in rural parts of the country are more likely to experience food insecurity than families in urban areas. For over 38 million Americans, understocked pantries are a harsh reality. In a country where supersized sodas and triple decker cheeseburgers are in every drive-thru, it can be hard for some to imagine that one of the wealthiest countries on earth is victim to food instability – a problem that has only been amplified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

At local, state, and national levels, church food banks are working to bridge the gap between food stamps and SNAP benefits for many families who are struggling to put food on the table. The Buies Creek First Baptist Church and the Salem United Methodist Church (UMC) are two examples of congregations putting food on the table for hundreds of residents in their small, rural North Carolina communities.

“We may have 100 to 150 families come in for the food pantry.” says Linda Marsal, the Director for the Salem UMC food bank in Simpson, North Carolina. Located seven miles outside of Greenville in the eastern part of the state, Simpson is a small village with a population of a little over four hundred people. There is no grocery store and most of the town’s citizens are eldery. UMC’s food bank started five years ago as an extension of the Backpack Buddies program, a service which seeks to provide food to school age children who are deemed food insecure by their teachers and guidance counselors. UMC started with providing food to five families. In 2020, Director Marsal estimated that the church food pantry provided meals to over 2,836 households.

The pantry is only open two times a month to pass out goods, but the church also provides something they call a “Blessing Box” which is filled with food every few days to help those who may be in a bind. Every two weeks, cars line up around the building to pick up bags of dry goods, dairy products, and meat. The pantry consists of all volunteers – no one is paid to pack the bags or pass out boxes. An off-duty sheriff deputy is often found directing traffic; volunteer college students and church members are the ones in the back keeping records and unloading and loading boxes of food. “We couldn’t do this without the kindness of others,” Marsal says. “This volunteer work is so important.”

Pastor Mike Sowers, Buies Creek First Baptist Church food pantry

Director Marsal’s story sounds much like that of Pastor Mike Sowers. Sowers is the head of the Buies Creek First Baptist Church food pantry, located in central NC just 40 miles south of the state capital. While the line that wraps around the church parking lot every Wednesday is a bit smaller than UMC’s, Pastor Sowers is addressing the same needs in his community. “Our food pantry came about because of the COVID pandemic,” Pastor Sowers says. “After the first two cases in the community were reported, we reached out to the local elementary school to see what we could do to help. Many kids rely on school breakfast and lunches and with schools closing, many kids would be losing those meals. So school age kids and their families were what we had in mind when we started this program.”

Yet, as First Baptist’s food pantry began to attract more and more attention, Sowers and his congregation began to realize it wasn’t just young families in need of the food bank’s services, but older members of the community as well. It is a similar situation at the food pantry in Simpson.

“Before we started the pantry,” Ms. Marsal comments. “I didn’t realize how many people needed this service.” Sowers adds, “COVID pushed a lot of people to use the food pantry, but many of these people should have been seeking help even before the pandemic.”

So why did it take a national crisis for so many people to ask for outside assistance? “People are embarrassed to be seen asking for help.” Ms. Lynch answers. “I’m not, but a lot of people don’t want to be seen going to the food bank. Why would you be embarrassed asking for help?”

Hunger is a universal human issue. Nobody should be denied access to be able to feed themselves and their families. Hunger can affect people from around the globe, and people in our own neighborhoods. When we live with privilege, when we make the assumption that everyone has the same access that we are afforded, we forget hunger looks like our neighbors and friends, school teachers and office workers. It affects the eldery and the young; disabled and able-bodied; people who no longer can work or who are underemployed; those who find it hard to leave the house to perform the task of shopping for groceries. It affects families with disabled children, single people who work several jobs and yet their monthly income doesn’t exceed $400, or even grandparents like Ms. Lynch who are not only trying to support themselves but their school age grandchildren.

According to data gathered by the US Department of Labor, the annual inflation rate for the United States is 6.8% – the highest since June 1982. Common sense suggests that an economy damaged by a global pandemic would place a strain on families dependent upon a commercial food supply. With the death of the family farm, sustenance becomes tied to the cost of commercially produced and distributed food products; therefore, the rising cost of living threatens each American table.

We live in a culture where the dominant narrative is that we all have access to the same opportunities and resources, and that one should be able to be successful if they just try harder. This “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality has a detrimental effect not only on folks that are in need of help, but on our own ability to understand that access and opportunity are not always equitably available. It took a global pandemic for people such as Director Marsal and Pastor Sowers to start asking their communities, “How do you need to be helped?”

It took the desperation that an event as enormous as a pandemic could create for people to put their embarrassment aside and seek the help they deserve. Sister Rosetta Sharpe’s 1944 recording of the gospel classic Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread speaks to the spirit of this problem when she sings, “If we all loved one another / Then the world would be fed / On only two little fishes / And five loaves of bread.” To paraphrase the African proverb, it takes a village. Each of us must remember that the needs of our communities often go much deeper than we realize. We must remember that hunger is a human issue, one that may impact our friends, our neighbors, our villages.

* Name has been changed to protect their identity

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amelia Currin is an emerging writer from rural North Carolina. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Sweet Briar College. When she isn’t writing, Amelia can be found at the barn teaching horseback riding lessons and sharing her passion for all things equine with kids and adults of all ages.