Feeding the hungry

By his own admission, 72-year-old Kirk Hallett should have retired years ago, but he says he can’t quit serving his Harrisburg, Pa., neighborhood just yet. Every weekday around lunchtime, he walks across Market Street from Joshua Group, an at-risk youth ministry he founded and directs, to the St. Francis of Assisi Parish soup kitchen. Usually a cook and two helpers have been in the kitchen since 7:30 a.m. making more than 100 meals packed in Styrofoam boxes. Hallett corrals volunteers to set up folding tables and prep paper bags with utensils and snacks. For the next hour, they hand out up to 165 meals to the residents of Allison Hill, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Harrisburg.

Father Orlando Reyes, who has served as the parish’s friar for the past 11 years, said his community is plagued by gang violence, poverty, and prostitution. One of the few certainties in Allison Hill for the past 30 years is a warm meal at St. Francis. Yet now the pandemic and supply chain issues test its endurance.

By 2019, food insecurity and hunger were at their lowest rates since the 1990s. The onslaught of COVID-19 erased these improvements and threw millions of families into poverty. By the end of 2020, food banks across the country were serving 55 percent more people than before the pandemic. Many of these recipients had never stood in a line for a meal before.

Donations from church groups, grocery chain deals, and individual donors make up 80 percent of Central Pennsylvania Food Bank’s stores. But rising inflation has had a toll on grocery store shelves, which in turn affects food banks. According to October’s consumer index, the price of meat skyrocketed 10.5 percent in the past year. Additionally, the end of increased unemployment benefits and pandemic stimulus checks have sent more people to food lines.

Supply chain delays have created not a food shortage, but a material shortage. Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and St. Francis’ pantry usually stock up with canned goods, but canneries have not produced at their typical rate due to aluminum shortages. The food bank has no canned yams, a typical holiday favorite, for this year’s boxes. In lieu of nonperishable items, it is looking for fresh sweet potatoes which must be frozen or distributed more quickly.

Before the pandemic, St. Francis’ soup kitchen served whoever showed up. As COVID-19 safety measures prevented volunteers from allowing people indoors, the church started to look outward, Reyes said. Hallett packed extra meals in a dilapidated pickup truck to deliver to shut-ins, a low-income veterans’ home, and people living under a bridge. When the truck finally broke down beyond repair, Hallett crammed his own car with trays of food, extra blankets, and paper bags.

This Thanksgiving, St. Francis held its first in-person gathering in more than a year. Between food drop-offs and monetary donations, the church stocked 22 frozen turkeys for the dinner. The dormant gymnasium filled with decorated tables for the roughly 230 guests who came on Thanksgiving Day. The leftovers piled into 100 extra packaged meals that Reyes and the volunteers delivered to the homeless. The space the turkeys used to fill in the kitchen freezers now stands ready for Christmas hams. Reyes planned to feed at least 200 at a Christmas dinner on Dec. 23.

Regardless of how high the price of meat rises, Reyes said, he will not shut the soup kitchen. “If all we have is rice and beans, then that’s what we’ll serve,” he said. “How can I shut down this place when our brothers and sisters are hungry? … God has blessed us with so many good things in this nation, so many opportunities, and so much food.”