Food pantry grows to serve the needs of residents

People make hundreds of decisions every day: What to have for breakfast? What to wear to work? To pack a lunch or meet a friend at the café? Where to park? Whether or not to grab a coffee and doughnut on the way into the office?

Every one of these questions carries a handful of secondary decisions to be made: To have toast, a bagel or muffin? Butter or jam? Cereal or oatmeal? To park in the lot or on the street?

I better have a plan going through the door or I will be there for half an hour. The day has hardly begun, but the point I am trying to make is half of my decisions are about food.

But what if a family is not food secure? What if there is no steady job or secure income and they have no idea where today’s meals are coming from?

In summer 2007, at the urging of Jack Ream from the Trinity Episcopal Church Food Pantry, the Tuscarawas County Council for Church and Community and the United Way assembled a group of churches and other organizations in the area that had individual food pantries to consider consolidation into one large community pantry in an effort to reach more people who needed food and to ensure a more equitable distribution of the food available.

The committee included a representative from Tuscarawas County Job & Family Services, the Friends of the Homeless, the Salvation Army and 11 area churches.

After several months of deliberation, on Jan. 25, 2008, the new Greater Dover New Philadelphia Food Pantry opened for the first time in the basement of the Salvation Army building.

In December of that year, the food pantry moved to its present location in the warehouse of the former downtown Buehler’s store.

Eligibility to receive food from the food pantry is defined each year by Ohio Job and Family Services as an income level at or below 200% of the federally defined poverty level for their family size.

Under these guidelines, U.S. census data indicates nearly 35% of the residents of Tuscarawas County are eligible for food assistance.

Considering the population of the communities, we could expect as many as 16,000 individuals or about 5,000 households might need help.

Based in part on hunger-relief studies at Michigan State University and from Feeding America, it is estimated that to end hunger in the area would require the distribution of 2 million pounds of food or more per year.

Food pantry operations are based on a few simple and important principles:

—No one in need is ever turned away.

—Honesty is assumed.

—Recipients can come every time we are open.

—Recipients choose the items they want.

—Larger families are offered more food.

—Food quantity is targeted at 80-85 pounds of food per average family per visit or approximately five to seven days of food per individual from a selection of 22 different items.

Since its beginnings in the basement of the Salvation Army building, the food pantry has undergone significant change. It has gone from an adjunct of the Trinity Episcopal Church Food Pantry to a separate member agency of the Akron Canton Regional Foodbank with status as an IRS 501(c)(3) charitable organization, from serving 100 families 15 pounds of food per week to serving over 500 families more than 80 pounds of food per week, from offering 12 food items at a cost of about $4 per family member per visit to providing over 20 food items at a cost of about $1 per family member, from relying on the help of about 15 volunteers each week to using well over 100, and, most importantly, from being a small player to a major force in the fight against hunger in the Tuscarawas Valley.

Thanks to the financial support of the community, the volunteer efforts of countless individuals and the availability of the Akron Canton Regional Foodbank, the Greater Dover New Philadelphia Food Pantry is making a critical difference in the lives of those in need of food in our area.

The Greater Dover New Philadelphia Food Pantry is open twice each week from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday and from 10 a.m. to noon on Friday and is located at 420 W. Third St. in Dover.

The mailing address is the Greater Dover New Philadelphia Food Pantry, P.O. Box 95, Dover, OH 44622.