The Colchester community food shelf is preparing to merge with other local food shelves and serve a higher number of people in need. Meanwhile, the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, which is the largest in Vermont, is seeing a decline in donations as well as volunteers.
Changes in Colchester
The Colchester community food shelf, run by and located at Holy Cross Church, has just one employee, coordinator Monica Cayia. Every once in a while, a volunteer or two will come through the doors and help stack food on the shelves, but for the most part, Cayia works alone, she says.
The food shelf is open just one day a week, but that will soon change. During the first week of March, the Colchester food shelf and four other local parishes will be combining to create a larger food distribution effort, Cayia says. When that happens, it will be open longer hours, will have more volunteers, and a bigger part of the community will be involved, she says.
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Monica Cayis, coordinator and only employee of the Colchester community food shelf. The food shelf will merge with other early next month, increasing the number of staff members. (Photo by Emily Kaas) |
The Colchester food shelf currently serves about 10 people per month. This number has increased over the past several years.
“The number varies, but it will continue to increase as long as prices of, well, everything keep going up,” Cayia says.
When the shelf starts to run low on supplies, the church puts an announcement in its newsletter, and many families from the church community bring in food shelf baskets, Cayia says. Also, there are many businesses and schools in the surrounding area that have food drives to keep the small shelves stocked.
Chittenden’s decline in supplies
The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf serves more than 10,000 people a year, according to its newsletter. Development coordinator Christian Reifsteck says only 50 percent of those people are from the Burlington area. Some come from as far as Montpelier for help.
Every year the food shelf gets about 500 volunteers, Reifsteck says. However, some only volunteer once and don’t come back, so there aren’t as many volunteers as it seems. Right now, the shelf does not have enough volunteers to meet the increasing demand of those in need.
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Empty shelves at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf warehouse in Burlington. The food shelf has seen a decline in donations this year. (Photo by Emily Kaas) |
“We scramble for volunteers on some days,” Reifsteck says. “There have been times when we’ve had to call people in.”
The employees at the food shelf don't like calling consistent volunteers to help them out when there aren’t enough people to work.
“They already do so much for us,” he says. “We don’t want to wear them out.”
The food shelf is launching a campaign to recruit more volunteers who will be consistent, because the shelf has had volunteers who don’t show up when they say they will, Reifsteck says.
Not only is the Chittenden food shelf running low on volunteers, their shelves are becoming much more spacious as well, Reifsteck says. The food shelf usually gets a lot of food donated over the holiday season, and then their food stock starts to deplete again once the holidays are over.This year, they are experiencing a sharper decline then usual, Reifsteck says.
“People tend to forget when the holidays are over that there is still hunger out there and people still need to eat,” he says.
A helping hand from campus
Various groups around the St. Michael's campus have raised both monetary and food donations for local food shelves, mainly the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. Groups donate to the Chittenden food shelf rather than the smaller food shelves in the area because it is both the largest and the most local, Father Brian Cummings says.
Every year Edmundite Campus Ministry holds a fund-raising drive to raise money for the Chittenden food shelf during the holiday season, Cummings says. Each year, St. Michael's give around $28,000 to $35,000 to the shelf.
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Bags of donations wait to be stacked at the Colchester community food shelf. (Photo by Emily Kaas) |
Campus Ministry is one of the largest donors to the food shelf, Reifsteck says.
However, following the trend of shortages this year, Campus Ministry gave less than usual, Cummings says. As of Jan. 31, they had given $27,300 to the food shelf.
There isn’t enough awareness of hunger and homelessness around our community year round, Cummings says.
“After the holiday season, the homeless are still homeless,” Cummings says.
Campus group Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts (M.O.V.E.) also supports the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. Director Heidi St. Peter says the program gives to the food shelf mostly on special occasions, such as donating turkeys at the holidays. The apples collected by first-year students during apple picking at the beginning of each year are also donated, she says.
M.O.V.E. provides four or five opportunities every year for volunteers to go to the Chittenden food shelf and donate their time, St. Peter says. She says it’s hard to get consistent volunteers to go to Burlington and work at the food shelf because of the time commitment. M.O.V.E. has tried several times to recruit volunteers, but it has never really worked out, she says.
Food shelves do a great job raising awareness of the struggles some people in our community go through with hunger and homelessness, but it’s never enough, St. Peter says.
“As long as there’s a hunger problem, there’s never enough awareness,” she says.