Soup kitchens face summer shortages

BANGOR – People go hungry in Vacationland, and not just on Thanksgiving and Christmas when most people’s minds turn to the less fortunate.

While many soup kitchens and food pantries see the most traffic during the frigid Maine winter, summer presents a “disguised need,” according to Beth O’Keefe, who runs the Lion of Judah Ministry in Cherryfield with her husband, Phil.

Bill Rae, director of Manna in Bangor, agreed emphatically. “You’ve been educated to think the summer is safe,” he said. “You’re getting ready to go on vacation or jump in your swimming pool. You’re packing a picnic and it is difficult to remember that there are lots of families that can’t. That’s a luxury to them.”

In a recent national survey conducted by Share Our Strength and Tyson Foods, more than 60 percent of emergency food providers selected summer as the season they experienced the lowest donations. Behind winter, summer was considered the season of greatest client demand. This overlap between slim donations and high demands makes summer a critical time for food assistance organizations.

Ironically, the summer need for food subsidy sometimes stems from two factors that would seem to diminish need: seasonal work and warm weather.

Frank Howard, assistant director of the Living Word Ecumenical Food Cupboard in Dover-Foxcroft, said his organization sees less traffic during the summer, which he attributed to the availability of seasonal jobs. However, Rae has often found that seasonal income pushes families just barely above government cutoffs for Medicaid and food stamps. Unable to collect welfare, working parents can find themselves even harder pressed to place food on the table.

Warm weather might alleviate heating bills, but it is not an unmitigated blessing. Rae explained that “in the winter the electrical company can’t turn off the heat and the landlord can’t throw you out. In the summer if you’re short on money, then the electricity gets shut off and the landlord will evict you.”

When spring arrives, families scramble to pay their rent and electrical bills. After a winter of “robbing from Peter to pay Paul, and crippling along in their rent and electrical bills,” many families are “forced to play catch-up all summer,” observed Pam Gryspeerd, director of the Brunswick Food Pantry.

At the same time, bills continue to mount, making it nearly impossible to climb out of debt. Home from school for the summer, children need day care, use more electricity and – without the benefit of subsidized school lunches – require extra meals.

This combination of factors drives families to soup kitchens and food pantries to meet their basic nutritional needs. Thanks to the generosity of supermarkets, many food assistance programs in Maine say they are prepared to meet surging demands in bakery goods. But like emergency food providers nationwide, what Maine programs lack most are fresh meat and vegetables; and that is where individual donations become essential.

Linda Brown, vice chairwoman of Martha and Mary’s Missionary Soup Kitchen in Presque Isle, commented that even though her organization benefits from the charity of local hunters who donate some of their game, it still receives less protein than any other major food category.

In the summer, Bill Rae’s chief goal is to “change people’s diets,” and he would most like to increase Manna’s supply of fresh vegetables.

Judith Guilford, manager of the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry in Ellsworth, concurred. Her pantry’s menu varies little throughout the year, and in addition to nutritional value she noted that fresh produce “makes you feel more prosperous.”

Beth O’Keefe succinctly stated the needs of Maine’s poor: “When there are people that are truly hungry, giving them pound cake or cookies doesn’t suffice. They need fresh vegetables and meat; practical things they can make a meal out of.”

As O’Keefe intimated, emergency food providers struggle not only to raise awareness of a general problem, but to publicize the specific needs of hungry Mainers.

School may be out for the summer, but for hunger prevention, this is the season for education.