Food Bank: Need Way Up

"There are quite a few empty spaces on these shelves as you can see," Mary Jane Crouch tells me as we walk along a line of shelves of canned goods. Crouch is the executive director of the local food bank. (Americas Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia.) "We've seen about a 29 percent increase in distribution over the past three months with the economy and the way food prices are going up in our community," she says. "So that's a really big increase in the need in people coming in to get more food."

"And the people that we're seeing turning more to food banks now than in the past are the families," Crouch says. "Actually, both family members are working. Just last Friday, I had a couple come in and they didn't have any food to get them through the weekend."

Carolyn Badger sees some of the people in need. On the fourth Saturday of every month, she provides food bags through a program with St. Philip A.M.E. Church. "We normally start at ten o'clock, but when I get here about nine, they've already lined up past the driveway," she tells me.

Badger says she started the program about five years ago, naming it the SAINT (Serving All In Need Today) Ministry. "They tell me it's a blessing for us to be doing this and they hope we never stop," she says.

Badger says she often sees mothers with several children, something that concerns Crouch at the food bank. "Nationally, one in every six people in a soup kitchen line is a child now," she says.

Pantries throughout coastal Georgia are counting on the food bank to fill the extra need. But Crouch says they have their own problems, that the price of gas is affecting them, too. "We're looking by summer that the fuel costs are going to be so high," she says. "We used to be able to get a truck load of food anywhere in the South for around $500. We're now seeing that as $800 and $900 for us to get that same truckload of food to us."

Crouch says because of transportation costs, they"re asking local residents to take part in a food drive on Saturday, May 10 being done in conjunction with the U.S Postal Service. "You can leave a bag of canned goods by you mailbox," she says.