Foodlink

The lines just seem to get longer and longer each month Pastor John Gariboldi and a group of volunteers host a free food pantry in the parking lot off Mill Street Park in Le Roy.

People come from throughout the region to gather up as much food as they can carry, all provided by Foodlink at no cost.

And it's good food, too. Fresh apples, bread, Greek yogurt along with sweet baked goods and cases of water.

"You get everything you can fit in your arms," Gariboldi said. "There are no requirements. Even if last week you went to another pantry, it doesn't matter."

The pantry is a Godsend, said Mary, from Geneseo, who adopted her granddaughter when she was 3 months old.

Mary is raising her granddaughter with only her Social Security check to cover household expenses.

"I got complete custody of her because her mother broke her back," Mary said. "I'll be 80 in November. I'm raising her. She's 14 now and I would love to see her graduate and I'm sure the Lord is going to let me."

Gariboldi said he's had a lifelong passion for helping the poor, the homeless and people in need. He became pastor of Penuel Christian Fellowship, 10 Main St., Le Roy, 10 years ago and started praying for the opportunity to feed the poor.

He got involved with Paul Ohlson and Care-a-Van Ministries in Le Roy.

"I met the Foodlink representative there and she said there was a high need in Genesee County and I thought, 'wow, this is a God thing,' " Gariboldi said. "I said 'would you be willing to do it in Le Roy?' and she said, 'yeah.' "

The pantry started slowly this summer, but by August, the line stretched from the parking lot up to the post office on Mill Street.

Last month, more than 100 people showed up even though it was pouring rain the entire morning.

"A long line shows that it kind of sucks," said Ashley, the mother of two children, a third on the way and a husband who can't work because of disabilities. "It shows that this place is so bad that people have to come out to get free food when there's no jobs."

Government assistance just isn't enough in this economy, Ashley said.

"I get food stamps, but sometimes food stamps isn't enough when you have growing kids," Ashley said. "They eat you out of house and home. I know it's not much, but at least I've got food on the table for my kids. They're not going to go hungry."

When people have a hard time getting food, social service experts call it "food insecurity." An estimated 14.7 percent of New York's residents live in food-insecure situations and 21.3 percent of children don't necessarily know where their next meal is coming from.

According to its Web site, Rochester-based Foodlink "rescues and redistributes more than 16 million pounds of food annually to a network of 450 member agencies in a 10-county service area: Allegany, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Seneca, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates counties."

In the past four years, Foodlink has seen a 30-percent increase in the number of people it serves.

Cheryl Maxwell, a Le Roy resident who teaches nutrition for Cornell Cooperative Extension, has been coming out to the Le Roy pantry almost from the start, and she said she's seen it grow and she thinks it's an economic issue.

"The last time out, it was pouring rain and they all came out and it was just amazing, the need that I saw," Maxwell said. "Some people might have bills to pay and if they can just get this little bit of extra food it might help them pay an electric bill or something throughout the month. With the economy the way it is, that little bit of food might help them get by and pay an extra bill."

Tracy, friends with Ashley, and a Batavia resident, said she has "a houseful of children" and a grandchild with cystic fibrosis. The food bank is a big help, she said, and not just because of the free food. It's also nice to know there are still people who help others.

"Even if it's just one bag of food, that bag of food is maybe a day or two worth of meals for a family that's having a rough time right now, so it really benefits them," Tracy said. "People need it nowadays to see that there are people out there who really do care."

Pastor Gariboldi delivers a mini-sermon for volunteers followed by a short prayer minutes before the food pantry line opens.

While Pastor Gariboldi hands out donuts, his son fills cups with cider for people waiting in line.

Sarah, from York, said with she and her husband and their child on a limited income, the free food from the pantry is a big help.

Mary brings her own cart to the pantry to gather food for her and her 14-year-old granddaughter, whom she's raising on just her Social Security benefits.

Tracy, left, and Ashley.

If you struggle with poverty, Foodlink invites you to SNAP out of it.

SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and it is available to Genesee County residents through SNAP E&T (Employment and Training).

Jerome Nathaniel, SNAP outreach and assistance coordinator, is offering outreach clinics to Genesee County families on the last Monday each month at a Foodlink partner agency.  The next one is Monday, July 29 from 9 until 11 a.m. at the Salvation Army, at 529 E. Main St. in Batavia.

According to Nathaniel, this is a change from how Foodlink -- which provides food and nutrition education to 450 agencies in 10 counties throughout Western and Central New York -- has done things in the past.

"We received a grant from the Walmart Foundation in January," he said. "Because of that grant, we have been able to add direct service as a major component (of our mission)."

Prior to this, Foodlink had been working with Genesee County through AmeriCorps Vista, which does not allow workers to engage in direct service. For the past two years, they have focused on providing training to partner agencies (shelters, soup kitchens, etc).

A press release from Foodlink described the SNAP outreach clinics as "a bridge between the Department of Social Services and those applying -- all in an effort to make it easier for all parties involved."

If you can't make it to the outreach clinic, don't panic.

"If you're from Batavia, you can actually just give me a call," Nathaniel said. "I've pre-screened most people more recently over the phone, as a matter of fact."

For able-bodied people between the ages of 16 and 59 who work less than 30 hours a week, the requirements of SNAP E&T are similar to those for receiving unemployment. Applicants must work at least 20 hours per week, and they must be able to provide proof that they are applying for jobs.

At this time, according to Foodlink's press release, 900,000 New Yorkers are eligible for SNAP services and don't even know it.

"A lot of people I've pre-screened have already applied for SNAP benefits in the past," Nathaniel said. "The problem is that the income guidelines are constantly changing. I pre-screened someone in Batavia who applied seven years ago, and this person was certainly eligible this time around."

But changing income guidelines are not the only factor behind the above statistic. Nathaniel points out that many people suffer from "circumstantial poverty as opposed to generational poverty."

"A lot of times," he said, "(there are) people who worked their whole lives and suddenly something changed. They used to have a certain income, and they were used to a type of lifestyle that required a certain level of income. And suddenly, someone in the household got laid off; or suddenly, they've retired and their retirement plan wasn't what they thought it was."

People in this type of situation, according to Nathaniel, would never imagine themselves as being eligible for a government program. But, in fact, they could be eligible for SNAP benefits.

In addition, there are a few misconceptions about the stated criteria. 

"A major mistake people make is that they don't understand what a household size is for SNAP purposes," Nathaniel said. "Ordinarily, you think of a household as meaning just whoever is under your roof -- so five people, for example. But when you're applying for SNAP, what they look at is whether or not those five people share the grocery expenses and share food. So you can have as many as five different SNAP applications in one household. That's five different SNAP households under one roof."

The gross monthly income requirement for SNAP E&T is $1,211 for an able-bodied adult under 59 and without disabilities, plus $429 for each additional person in the household.

For someone over 59 or disabled, the requirement is $1,852 plus $660 for each additional person. Medical expenses (including out-of-pocket premiums), utilities, rent and mortgage are also taken into account for this population.

For more information, call Nathaniel at 328-3380, ext. 150.

Top graphic courtesy of Kim Montinarello

Every month, hundreds of people in Genesee County rely on free food programs to help them meet their nutritional needs, and the number of people needing assistance has only grown, according to local food bank officials.

Even as the need goes up, said Laura Sugarwala, nutrition resource manager for Foodlink, funding is in danger of being cut.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget cuts funding for the main source of revenue for these programs by 13 percent and puts the budget allocation into the Maternal Child Health and Nutrition Grant program.

The change would essentially end the 30-year-old Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP).

Agencies such as Foodlink would compete with other programs for a single pot of money. Also, the change would delay the ability of Foodlink and the organizations they serve to budget in advance of providing services, at least to the same degree they can now.

Foodlink helps channel HPNAP funding to four local agencies that feed the hungry -- Community Action of Orleans & Genesee, the Salvation Army, Steven's Table and City Church.

"I see a lot of hungry people, a lot of children this could potentially effect," said Lisa Whittmeyer, emergency service coordinator for Community Action.

Whittmeyer and Sugarwala hope that area residents will stop by the Community Action office at 5073 Clinton St. Road, Batavia, to sign a petition, sign the online petition at FoodlinkNY.org, or write to Assemblyman Steve Hawley and Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer and express support for retaining funding as is for HPNAP.

The proposed cuts would mean a cut in services and the amount of food available, both Whittmeyer and Sugarwala said.

Sugarwala said it will be much harder to provide properly nutritious food to clients of the local agencies if funding is cut.

"In my role as nutrition resource manager, I would have to make decisions, without funding, about what we wouldn't be able to carry in the way of nutritious products, items like low-grain and low-sodium products -- all the things that are important for health," Sugarwala said.

The people who rely on food bank programs are not necessarily the same people who get food stamps or receive other government assistance.

Those programs are means tested and sometimes people reach circumstances in their life where they simply don't have enough money for food, even though they don't qualify for other government assistance programs.

For any of the food banks, anybody who walks through the door and says they're hungry gets a meal.

"People in our service area come from a variety of backgrounds," Sugarwala said. "We don't know everything that's going on at home."

Foodlink, which receives $2 million in annual funding from HPNAP, serves a 10-county region in WNY. Four years ago, a survey found 125,000 people in that service area that don't always get enough to eat.

Since then, food banks have seen a 30-percent increase in the number of meals served. Foodlink is preparing another survey because officials suspect the number of people facing food emergencies regularly may have as much as doubled.