The following article written by Marsha Keefer originally appeared in the April 3rd edition of the Beaver County Times. Used with permission.
When 22,000 Beaver County residents go to bed hungry, food drives can be critical.
Two young boys, brothers, arrived late to a free lunch being served at Holy Spirit Fellowship Church in New Brighton.
Consequently, there wasn’t much left. Instinctively, the older boy took a slice of bread, broke it in half and shared it with his little brother. But something about the gesture said it’s “something he does regularly. It wasn’t just a one-time thing. It’s something he’s used to having to do,” said Michael J. Rubino, executive director of United Way of Beaver County. He relayed the story, one told to him by Holy Spirit’s pastor, to illustrate the hunger problem in Beaver County.
“I was unfortunately amazed at the depth and width of hunger in Beaver County,” said Rubino, who’s only been at the helm of United Way since September 2014. Every day, people in the county go to bed with empty bellies. An estimated 22,740 — or 13.3 percent, according to Feeding America — don’t get enough to eat. Which is why supporting initiatives like Scouting for Food are so critical, Rubino said.
The nationwide program, now in its 30th year, is administered through United Way in partnership with Boy Scouts of America — one of its 17 partner agencies — to gather food for the less fortunate.
This year’s campaign began Friday and continues through the month. The drive is two-pronged: Scouts conduct door-to-door residential drives while United Way mobilizes the business community. Canned foods and other nonperishables such as paper products and diapers go to stock the 15 food banks, soup kitchens and feeding sites in Beaver County.
While the country’s economy has rebounded since the 2007 recession, it’s been a slow and uneven recovery here, Rubino said, where the poverty level is approximately 13 percent. The Urban Institute, a nonprofit policy research organization that studied poverty in the seven counties that make up the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area (Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland) found one in eight residents (284,000 people) had incomes below poverty level in its most recent report on poverty and income insecurity released November 2014.
“Beaver County had the most growth in its poverty population — a 32 percent increase between 2000 and 2012,” the report said. Those most likely to be poor, according to the Urban Institute, are children, elderly, female-headed households, people of color and people with disabilities, including veterans.
“One of the most difficult things to do is to put a face on hunger,” said Maj. Richard Lyle, Salvation Army’s Beaver County coordinator. “It wasn’t that long ago where you had this picture in your mind of where hungry people were, where they came from, what the situations that they were involved with.
“But today, the face of hunger is changing. The numbers suggest that your neighbor or someone in your neighborhood, no matter where you live in Beaver County, is dealing with hunger. Some of the traditional imprints on our mind about hunger and where hungry people are, those remain true, but with the changing of society hungry people are everywhere.”
The Salvation Army coordinates food banks in Beaver Falls, Aliquippa, Rochester and a service unit food pantry in Midland. But there are additional pantries and feeding sites run by churches and nonprofits. Monthly, “we’re servicing about 4,000 people,” Lyle said.
For the past six or eight months, Lyle said that figure has reached a plateau. “In a backward kind of way, that’s good news because the number had been climbing quite steadily. To actually see it level off, it’s a welcome statistic, but the number is quite large.” When Lyle arrived in Beaver Falls six years ago, “we were helping 1,200 people a month,” he said, a number that has been on a steady climb.
“It’s actually good to see it plateau and level off,” Lyle said. “That’s an indication that maybe we’ve started to turn the corner on some things as it relates to the economy and so forth, but only time will answer that question.” Scouting for Food, the largest food drive to benefit local food banks and pantries, Lyle said, typically generates between 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of nonperishable food.
“It’s incredible, but along with the food there are a number of companies that make financial donations, as well. It’s those dollars that help us purchase things like the canned fruit that you see here or the canned vegetables — things that we buy in bulk and at a reduced price.”
The Salvation Army uses a “shop-through program,” Lyle said. Instead of being presented with a bag or box of food packed by volunteers, people get to pick and choose what foods they need. “One of the things that has really proved valuable with that is there’s no waste. People generally take exactly what they’re going to use. … It has proved to be a very valuable system that allows us to fully utilize the food rather than folks taking stuff that they’re not going to use. Our family menus and planning are all different.”
Children, Lyle said, “are particularly vulnerable and in need as it relates to hunger.” The number of children in poverty in Beaver County “grew by nearly 30 percent, reaching 7,100 children by 2012,” the Urban Institute said. “The example of that greatly was shown by our summer food program,” Rubino said, referring to the federal Summer Food Service Program administered in Pennsylvania by the Department of Education that’s an extension of the free and reduced-price school lunch program.
The summer meals are served at numerous sites throughout the county, typically churches, schools and recreation centers. “Last year, over 50,000 meals were given out in an eight-week period,” Rubino said, and that’s just to children who were able to get to the sites. Access and transportation, particularly for children living in remote and rural areas, is always a problem.
Consequently, more and more people turn to public assistance pro- grams for help; federally funded programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SummerFoodService Program; and area food banks and soup kitchens. By 2012, 2,769 households in Beaver County were receiving public assistance — up 29.9 percent from 2000, said the Urban Institute.
Rubino also referenced United Way’s 2-1-1, a three-digit phone number that connects callers with health, housing, food and human services. Last year, calls to the free and confidential service numbered 2,669, the majority from Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, Ambridge and Rochester.
The top two needs were rent payment assistance and food, he said. Of great concern, too, are the “near-poor,” the report said — those living at or near the edge of poverty. “The largest increases in near-poor populations happened in Westmoreland (16.2 percent) and Beaver counties (14.7 percent) — more than twice the percentage increase for the region as a whole.
At the same time more people were seeking help, revenues of human service providers were declining — “by 25 percent in Beaver and Westmoreland counties,” the Urban Institute found. And many nonprofits were spending more than they generated in revenue.
“Unfortunately, hunger never takes a vacation,” Rubino said. “And so the need to make this Scouting for Food drive a success is more urgent than ever.” Lyle agreed. Hunger is “24/7, 365. It has reached the point where the need is very large; the need is very real. It’s a documented need.”
