York Town News
Coming together for the York Community Food Pantry
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Century 21 Atlantic Realty staff presented a check for $780 to the York Community Food Pantry this past week, money raised by the sale of chocolate chip cookies at the brokers' Harvestfest booth this year. Accepting on behalf of the pantry were Co-Directors Fran Koerschner, third from left, and Marianne Quinn, at far right. Representing Century 21 were Mike Kleist, Matt Gallucci, Laura Daly, Jeffrey Jellison, Nancy Ergmann and Kristin Haight.
Photo by Virginia Woodwell
Local scouts collected 59 bags of food for the York Community Food Pantry this past weekend, and helped stock the shelves on Saturday, Oct. 28. Pictured are Zachary Bald of Boy Scout Troop 301, Fran Koerschner, and Nate Bald, Peter Keneally, Elliot Gear and Trevor LaBonte of Cub Scouts Pack 301.
Photo by Beth Murphy
YORK - When Mike Kleist arrives at Harvestfest each year, he comes lugging two five-gallon buckets of chocolate-chip cookie dough.
Once on scene, he joins nine other colleagues from Century 21 Atlantic Realty to turn that dough into another kind of dough: money for the York Community Food Pantry.
The 10 volunteers kick in their Harvestfest time at a booth where they fire up an oven, shape and bake the cookies and then sell them - something like 1,500 of them at three for $2, with coffee available for sale, too, donated by Foster's Clambake - to passersby.
This past Thursday, Oct. 26, Kleist and six of his co-workers descended on the Food Pantry to deliver the results: $780 in a cash donation.
Century 21 has been doing this for 10 years, Kleist said, and he called this Harvestfest's cookie sales "one of our best."
The Food Pantry he termed "a great endeavor that we enjoy supporting - a way of giving back to the community."
Marianne Quinn and Fran Koerschner, on the receiving end as co-directors of the pantry, termed the Century-21ers "always bubbling and happy. … They do it," they added appreciatively, "with good hearts."
For Quinn and Koerschner, the donation and attendant publicity couldn't come at a better time.
Their shelves, located in a building behind Fazio's Restaurant on Woodbridge Road, happened to have been pretty fully stocked last Thursday, but that, they reported, was only because York residents had just recently responded generously to a desperate plea for help issued in September.
In the longer term, they said, demand is up while supplies are dwindling, and that's a phenomenon occurring regionally as well as locally.
"All food bank supplies are down in this area of the country," said Koerschner, and she quoted Rick Small, executive director of the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn, from which the York Food Pantry gets a monthly foodstuffs shipment, as saying that, in Maine this year, supplies were down from last year's by 8 percent while demand was up by 20 percent.
Good Shepherd, now 25 years old, is a non-profit agency that collects and distributes food for the hungry throughout Maine; according to its website, last year it distributed 8.9 million pounds of food to more than 500 relief agencies serving 70,000 Mainers.
Analysts, Koerschner, Quinn and others have reported, see several reasons for the recent disturbing trends. Hikes in the cost of gas have exacerbated other cost-of-living increases, like the high price of housing and home heating fuels, and these, coupled with low wages and job losses, have made it increasingly hard for some families to put food on the table.
Additionally, the numbers of needy have been swelled by a tightening of federal guidelines for the dispensing of food stamps that occurred on July 1.
In York, Quinn and Koerschner said, demand actually lessens in summer when seasonal employment opportunities open up, but it swells at this time of year when the same jobs end.
On the supply side, all the pleas for donations occasioned by natural disasters within the last year - the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan earthquake and more locally, last spring's floods - have taxed individuals' and institutions' capacities, and perhaps inclinations, to give.
At the same time, more efficient computerized control of inventory at supermarkets and elsewhere has meant that traditional food suppliers now have less surplus to dispose of. Additionally, last spring's heavy rains reduced some farming output, resulting in a reduction in crop surpluses for items like apples and tomatoes.
The York Community Food Pantry serves between 30 and 40 clients a week, all residents of greater York, Quinn and Koerschner said.
"A lot of people think that there's no poverty in York," said Quinn, "but there definitely is. … Many of our clients are working poor."
The pantry itself, 15 years old, exists on an annual budget of $50,000 and is staffed entirely by volunteers. They work in teams each week, Quinn said, appearing on Thursday mornings, the only day the Pantry is open, to accept donations after 8 a.m. and to sort and stack foods before clients arrive in the afternoon; the volunteers then fill bags for clients, according to their requests, between 12:30 and 3 p.m.
"Every family, every week," Quinn said, "also gets eggs, cheese, butter and a meat of their choice, depending on availability."
The pantry gets its food from, in addition to the Good Shepherd, Hannaford, which contributes its culled produce and baked goods on a weekly basis, churches, service clubs, businesses and individuals, with donations coming in the form of cash as well as food. The pantry also buys food from Good Shepherd and Hannaford.
This month, the pantry has an exceptional need: a 1½-ton van to replace one that will no longer pass inspection. They will be able to rent another at a reduced rate, Quinn said, until a replacement is somehow found.
"Things are better right now," said Quinn, in thanking all those who answered the recent plea for help. "We got a wonderful response and we thank everyone. But we're coming into our busiest season. People are usually very generous around the holidays. We hope they won't forget us after the first of the year."
Food and other donations to the York Community Food Pantry may be left after 8 a.m. on Thursday mornings. Donations of money may be sent to the York Community Food Pantry at P.O. Box 243, York, ME 03909. For more information, call 351-1928.
