Black shopping bags lay on the table in the middle of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church’s auditorium. Evelyn McCatty and her staff of three volunteers prep the last of the bags to place on the table before they open the doors. Outside the church, people started to form a line around seven am. They wait until the doors open at eight with the hope of leaving with one of the bags filled with food. This is one stop of many in the quest to feed their families.
Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church is located at 1891 McGraw Ave in Parkchester in the Bronx. The church’s food pantry began serving families in need in the mid-1970s. “Originally we were able to serve people based on their family size, but now because of our limited budget we only give out one bag of food which is really not enough for a family,” said McCatty. Funding for the pantry began to decline about three years ago. As a result, the number of families seeking service decreased as well.
McCatty began volunteering in the Food Pantry in 1986 when the funding was in its glory. At that time, the pantry underwent a restructuring that made it into the organization it is today. Since then, she has focused on taking the necessary steps to maintain service to the community. One of those steps included changing the way they assist those in need.
In order to insure continuous service, Saint Paul’s is a member of the Food Bank of America and is supervised by the United Way that assists them with managing their state money. Organizations like the Food Bank of America and United Way typically distribute the donations it receives to the food pantries. These alliances are necessary for the pantry’s survival because it is not an independent entity, but a part of the church.
“We can’t get to many private foundations directly because we are under the church’s 501C3. The pantry does not have an independent 501C3,” said McCatty. “Private corporations usually will not fund church pantries, but they do fund directly through the Food Bank or United Way.”
“If a person is here for the first time we service them. If the people have been here before we tell them to come every other month in order to give other families a chance to be serviced,” said McCatty. The volunteers log in the names and of address of each person given food in order to keep track. The staff began to do this because in the past they ran out of food within two to three weeks of a single month. This would cause them to close for one-two weeks out of the month because they only receive food deliveries once a month.
The volume of food received in a single delivery depends on their working budget. The church is a member of Thriving for Lutherans an organization that helps Lutheran churches secure funding. Through this association, McCatty obtains the budget from government grants such as, state grants received through the Department of Health and a city grant through the Department of Human Services; Food Group. Private donations make up a small portion of funding with Ridgewood Savings Bank being their major donator.
The food pantry uses the combination of public and private funding to stay in the best shape possible for the people they help. Saint Paul’s doses not exclude anyone and the pantry is open to all who come. “We don’t just provide for people in zip code 10462. We get a lot of people from zip code 10473 and, occasionally, we get people that do not reside in the borough,” said McCatty. According to the Social Explorer, zip code 10462, that includes the Parkchester neighborhood, has a median salary of $50,000. Zip code 10473, which is in community board 9 along with 10462, has a median salary of $40,000. A look at the housing set up supports this data because there are eight public housing projects for low income families in zip code 10473.
The number of total families coming to the pantry dropped because the resources available declined. Saint Paul’s now finds it is helping more singles than families. “You see there are more than one pantry around. So people go from pantry to pantry,” said McCatty. People are resorting to this tactic because much of the federal funding has gotten cut.
The cutback on the amount of federal funding caused a major dilemma for food pantries. “State grants three years ago totaled $18,000. Last year it got cut down to $8, 000,” said McCatty. She currently does not know what the future will bring for the pantry. The only hope she has in continuing to work and make the right decisions at the right time. She alluded to the fight her clients face and why they must go from pantry to pantry in order to eat. “We are currently operating on a budget of about $25,000. You can’t buy much food with $25, 000,” said McCatty.
Evelyn McCatty, Director of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church’s Food Pantry
