Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
Nonprofits and local government agencies filled a meeting room at the United Way of Reno County office on Oct. 29 to discuss how many Reno County residents will be affected by food assistance being held up by the ongoing federal government shutdown, and how the community can help those people.
It is a daunting task. Between the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), around 6,000 people receive food assistance in the county, with SNAP representing about 80% of that assistance.
In comparison, the Food Bank of Reno County has been providing food to about 42 families per weekday recently, which works out to 910 households per month. If those households match the average household size in Reno County of 2.3 people, that means the Food Bank helps about 2,100 people per month.
For the Food Bank to help everyone in the county affected by the delays in SNAP and WIC, it would need to nearly quadruple the help it provides. Even that probably would be less help than SNAP recipients receive. The Food Bank of Reno County currently tries to provide about five days of food to the people it helps, who are limited to one visit every 30 days. In Kansas, average SNAP benefits are $183 per person per month. I don’t know about anyone else’s finances, but that is significantly more than five days of groceries.
All of this is to say, it will be a struggle for the community and nonprofits to fill the gap left by the federal shutdown if it continues much longer.
But feeding our hungry neighbors is worth the struggle. Even if the shutdown ends and benefits are restored retroactively, we will have fed our neighbors in a time of insecurity and anxiety.
The good news is that local nonprofit and local government agencies are already working on it, and trying to cooperate and share resources to do so. I hope it works out well and they are able to find ways to share capacity to help more people.
It is a bit unfortunate that this has happened before the Food Bank could move into its new facility, where it will have significantly more capacity, but the fact that the Food Bank was already working on that is a positive.
For all the willingness of local organizations to cooperate to respond to hunger, it will take regular people to make this work, donating and volunteering.
For donations, the Food Bank will have a Stuff the Truck food drive from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at Dillons Marketplace, 3200 E. Plaza Drive in Hutchinson.
Monetary donations may be even more helpful than food donations, though. For starters, the Food Bank generally can buy food at lower prices than you or I can, making every dollar go farther. Monetary donations also can be used to buy the specific things that Food Bank clients need most, and the Food Bank knows better than the average person what its clients will use. And while the Food Bank remains in its current facility, monetary donations allow the Food Bank to get food when it has the space to stock it.
As the need for food assistance increases, hopefully matched by donations, the Food Bank also needs volunteers to keep things running smoothly.
You can also help by signal-boosting the message that people need help and how local organizations are working to provide that help. That was one of the big takeaways from the Oct. 29 meeting, as organizations offered to share communications from the Food Bank.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.