WEYMOUTH, Massachusetts. – On a recent Saturday, Shana Savage parked his car in the line of vehicles that meandered through the parking lot of Old South Union Church. Savage gave birth to her second child this summer. With their husband unemployed, they struggle to feed their two young children – 6 months and 18 months – let alone for themselves.
“Things are very, very difficult right now,” said Savage as volunteers from Weymouth Food Pantry placed some boxes of food in their trunk. “We have been very hungry. Without this food bank, we would probably not eat some nights. “
The Savage family is among hundreds of thousands across the country, struggling to put enough food on the table amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
More than 50 million people living in America, including 17 million children, are likely to experience food insecurity by the end of the year, according to Feeding America, the country’s largest anti-hunger organization. This is equivalent to one in six Americans and one in four children – an increase of almost 50% compared to 2019.
In 40 years of working in food banks, Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, said she never saw a greater need.
“I have been through many disasters … hurricanes and floods,” said D’Amato, but, “we have not seen it so widespread” in every city, every state, every country around the world involved.
Before the pandemic, the Greater Boston Food Bank provided about 550 food pantries with about a million pounds of food a week, D’Amato said. Now deliveries have risen to £ 2.5m of food shipped weekly from its huge and meticulously organized warehouse in South Boston.
One of the areas they serve is Norfolk County, where Weymouth is located. The county has a distinction that no one would want: a projected 168% increase in child hunger since 2018, according to Feeding America, the biggest increase anywhere in the country.
Although the pandemic did not cause the problem of hunger in the country, it made things much worse.
Pam Denholm, executive director of Weymouth Food Pantry, said the pressure on pantries like hers has intensified since March.
“Demand has increased dramatically,” said Denholm. “Across America, we have these middle class communities that are being deeply affected.”
The queues are now full of people arriving for the first time, many of whom have lost their jobs or are working short hours and are ashamed to ask for help, Denholm said.
“We have a large part of our population working in the service sector,” said Denholm. “I’m talking about restaurants, hairdressers, beauticians, nail salons – all these types of family and family stores that are most affected right now.”
Not far away, at Medway Village Church Food Pantry, director Susan Dietrich said she is seeing much of the same.
“We have seen many new families arriving, and I will tell you that probably the most difficult thing I saw during this pandemic is the families that come and bring their children,” said Dietrich. “And to see a mother walking in the door with her three young children. And they are looking around. “
Dietrich paused, his eyes filling with tears.
“And the mother is struggling,” she added. “She never did that before either. So she is trying to remain calm for her children. And she is trying to make sure that she can continue to put food on the table. This is something that really hits you. “
It is something that Yahaira Lopez knows firsthand. She is raising her 11-year-old twin children, both with unique learning needs, in Randolph, Massachusetts.
“I kind of always say that my house is like a bag of Skittles, you know, it bursts,” she said. “It is a fun and chaotic home.”
Two years ago, Lopez co-founded a community food pantry after realizing that many in his city needed help with shopping. Now fired from her crisis intervention job, she said she sometimes needs food from the pantry for her own family.
She said that diving into the food supply from the pantry she helped create has been stressful for her; because she is concerned with depriving others.
“I went to college and you think, ‘I went to college. I have this diploma. I’m going to get this job first, ‘”said Lopez.
“And then realizing that in this pandemic, I am no different than so many families across America,” she added.
Lopez recounted her situation with ironic laughter, but she admitted that the pandemic sometimes left her in tears.
“The problem with being a father is that you literally don’t have time to cry,” said Lopez. “Because the minute you break, your whole house will break.”
So Lopez makes her cry where her kids can’t see her – in the bathroom.
But even with all the anguish, there are people trying to help.
Pam Denholm, the director of Weymouth Food Pantry, choked on one of them: an elderly woman, almost 80 or 90, who lives on a limited income and has depended on the food bank to supplement her groceries.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the woman called and said she realized that the supermarkets are empty and said “there must be a family in Weymouth that has no food,” recalled Denholm.
Denholm collapsed when he remembered what the old woman said next: “If you could, please give my food to a family that needs it.”
“I mean, who does that?” Denholm said. “Who doesn’t have enough for themselves and phones and says, ‘There are children who are hungry. Please give them my order? ‘”
Others also came forward to help. Contributions to food banks are skyrocketing. After watching a story on NBC Nightly News featuring the Greater Boston Food Bank last week, a viewer sent two tractor trailers to help, containing 44 pallets of food.
Back in Medway, Susan Dietrich, the pantry director, said she hopes to see the government do more. The uncertain fate of the stimulus package approved by Congress last week raises concerns that more families will go hungry.
“Food insecurity is absolutely a need that we must address,” she said. “Our government put a band-aid on it.”
Dietrich said that while programs like the government’s SNAP food assistance program help, voluntary efforts should not be seen as the solution.
“This is not how it should be. And the stigma that people feel, that they are made to feel less, that they are made to feel that they need to beg for food is not right. And we need to do better, all of us, working together. “
Dietrich noted the creation of the coronavirus vaccine.
“We are able to solve problems,” she said. “We just found a vaccine for a new coronavirus in less than a year because the whole world was working for one purpose.”
“Imagine what we could do if the world came together and said, ‘We need to end food insecurity’. We need to look at all the systems that we have in place for the way we distribute and manage food and review it. Because it is not normal for people to run out of food, ”added Dietrich.
Coronavirus vaccines were launched across the country this week, raising hopes that the pandemic could end soon.
But D’Amato, of the Greater Boston Food Bank, noted that hunger is “a problem that cannot be cured by inoculation.”
“And that means that we have to take the way we see things seriously and ensure that Americans are elevated towards financial independence,” she said.
For many American families, just an unexpected account of insolvency, D’Amato said the pandemic was a “tipping point”.
But she believes that while hunger is a difficult problem, it has no solution. “It only takes political will and individual will to make this problem disappear,” added D’Amato.
Meanwhile, trucks continue to leave their warehouse in Boston loaded with food to fill thousands of empty bellies, many belonging to children, too young to understand that Santa Claus will not be able to fix everything that is broken this year.