07/29/2005

PLAINVILLE -- The Plainville Community Food Pantry has been helping local residents for nearly 40 years, ever since it was first founded in the late 1960s. During those decades it has provided food, clothing and other necessities of life to hundreds and thousands of applicants, running its mission entirely off of volunteer efforts. 

People have traditionally come to the food pantry, according to director Susie Woerz for a helping hand in times of need. Families without the money to purchase groceries can apply to the warehouse on South Canal Street, or a resident seeking clothes for a job interview. 

"We’re helping the low income working poor. We’re helping the disabled," Woerz said of the pantry’s traditional clientele. "Most of the clients choose between rent, medicine and food."

Yet recently, according to Woerz, the pantry has begun to see a different kind of demand.

"The people we’re seeing are more severe," Woerz said. "They’re more severe than we’ve been seeing in the past."

Within the past year, according to officials at the pantry, the organization has seen a change in its demographics. Residents seeking help come with greater need than they used to, and have begun to come from different backgrounds.

Quite simply, a greater and greater number of people have begun approaching the pantry with virtually no resources whatsoever, Woerz said.

"People we’re seeing at the pantry now are people that were working, may have had an illness that took them out of work," she said, "People that may be unemployed."

Over the past year, since January, the pantry has begun to see a sharp increase in the need driving people to the pantry. Before, according to the director, most applicants needed help with day-to-day matters, such as assistance covering groceries or back to school shopping. Sometimes Woerz would direct applicants to counseling, or other external programs to get their affairs back in order.

Today applicants still need the groceries and backpacks just as they used to, she said, but they often also need much more.

With greater frequency people seek help from the food pantry on the verge of eviction, or without the resources to pay for a winter heating bill costing many thousands of dollars. A growing number of jobless applicants approach the pantry, as well as increasing numbers of residents on fixed incomes often shocked by spiraling costs of fuel and medicines.

"We always say we want them to become self sufficient. Some people can’t do that because they just don’t have the income," Woerz said. "Our incomes are not changing and our expenses are."

Unfortunately, according to Woerz, the pantry often lacks the resources to provide this level of assistance.

"We can’t do it, there’s nothing we can do and that’s the point, I think, where it’s hard for us because we’ve always been able to pick these people up and put them back together, and the issues are so huge now," Woerz said. "I think we’re seeing more people that are using the pantry just to survive."

Part of the difficulties have come from scaled back social programs, according to officials at the PCFP.

"The services that used to be there are no longer there or have been cut," Woerz said. "With all these cuts, it’s bringing more severe cases to us."

Residents who used to rely on programs designed to address a greater level of need have begun turning to the food pantry as those programs have vanished or shrunk. Unfortunately, she added, these disappearing programs are the very ones on which the food pantry used to rely to handle such cases.

"With social services (reduced), people think that we’re going to pick it up," Woerz said. "We can pick up what the pantry’s mission is."

This mission is one which the local organization continues to perform day in and day out. Perhaps the PCFP cannot help an applicant pay for that $5,000 heating bill, according to Woerz, but at least they will send him or her home with groceries for the week.

"We can help them with food, and they can take the money they would have used for food and buy the medication, buy the oil," Woerz said.

The Plainville Community Food pantry can be contacted at (860) 747-1919, or at 54 South Canal St.

Eric Reed can be reached at ereed@newbritainherald.com or by calling (860) 225-4601, Ext. 320. 

©The Herald 2005