By Eileen Moon
From her office window in Neptune, Kim Guadagno watched as a woman approached the entrance to Fulfill, the nonprofit organization that provides food and other critical support to some 300 food pantries in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
As the woman got close to the door, she turned around and went back to her car. Then she turned around again, walking back to the entrance to do what she had come to do in the first place: ask for the help she needed to feed her family.
The woman had come from Middlesex County, too embarrassed to seek help at a charity closer to home.
“We loaded her up with whatever she needed to feed her family,” Guadagno said.
Scenes like that are happening on a daily basis at her office and at the many charities it serves, said Guadagno, who is president and CEO of Fulfill, the organization formerly known as the Foodbank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties. The name change reflects the fact that Fulfill now offers a constellation of services aimed at stabilizing families in crisis by assisting with needs that range from health care, tax filing assistance, skills training and many other critical needs. They do so thanks to the “stunning generosity” of a community that includes state and federal support and corporate, charitable and individual donations. And 95 percent of the donations they receive go directly to client services, Charity Navigator reports.
“People think (residents of) Monmouth and Ocean counties are poor little rich kids, but what we’re really doing is hiding our stress very well,” Guadagno said.
That reality is evident here in the Two River area as well, where the five food pantries Fulfill serves have seen the number of families requesting assistance increase by 56 percent.
Prior to the pandemic, Lunch Break in Red Bank regularly served 30-40 families a day. By late May that number more than tripled, noted Lunch Break’s director of operations Chuck Watson.
In the months since, it has settled at approximately 90 families a day, but with another surge in COVID-19 predicted, no one is ready to declare the emergency over.
“We’re still double,” Watson said.
Lunch Break used to invite clients to select their own groceries from the food pantry and provided dine-in hot meals to clients as well. Now, said Watson, “Both our front door (dine-in) and back door (food pantry) are grab and go.”
“So many people who are coming are first-timers,” said Chrissy Varkas, pantry supervisor. They’re also seeing regular clients coming more frequently as jobs have been lost or hours cut back due to the pandemic. “The families we were seeing once a month we’re now seeing four times a month,” she said.
In past years, Lunch Break has provided Thanksgiving groceries to an average of 700 families. This year, that number rose substantially to 948.
“That is a huge increase,” Varkas said.
On a single day last week, just before Thanksgiving, 161 people turned to Lunch Break for help from the food pantry. “Those are people who don’t normally come to Lunch Break,” she noted.
Many first-timers feel ashamed about their situation and are reluctant to ask for help until they have no other option.
“We try to eliminate as many barriers as we can because of the shame they’re feeling,” said Gwendolyn Love, Lunch Break executive director. “Yes, they had a job. Now they don’t. What we’re doing is providing help in a way that makes people feel welcome. That’s why we’re here. People have been very generous, so we’ve got food. There’s no excuse not to come and get it.”
As they did at Thanksgiving, the food pantry is now gearing up to provide Christmas dinner fixings. They welcome donations of hams so they can offer families a choice of ham or turkey, Varkas said. They’re also always in need of staples like shelf-stable milk, black beans and cereal.
The goal is not simply to keep families fed, but to help them feel cared for and keep their spirits up in a difficult time.
“We’re trying to meet all the needs that they have,” said Varkas. “We’re trying to keep it festive as well so that people don’t feel the angst.” They recently hosted a “cookies and socks” distribution day. “It might not seem like a lot, but I’ve seen the smiles on their faces,” Varkas said.
The organization is now soliciting gift cards, preferably to Target or Walmart, to distribute to families in lieu of the traditional toy drives of past years. “What we’re trying to do is provide every child with a gift card of $75,” Love said. “That’s the big push right now.”
Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of the community, Love said, Lunch Break has been able to help people pay utility bills, keep their internet service and make their rent and mortgage payments during the crisis through Lunch Break’s Emergency Covid Relief program. Launched with a $50,000 grant from the Stone Foundation, the program has now provided nearly half a million dollars in emergency payments for area families in need. “We do not pay the families directly, we pay the vendors,” Love noted. Having internet service is critical for adults working from home and children doing their schoolwork remotely.
Other area food pantries have seen needs expand as well.
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Red Bank recently added a third day to its St. Crispin’s Food Pantry, which is a member of Fulfill and also receives needed support from parishioners and members of area Boy and Girl Scout troops, said Pastor Rev. Al Tamayo. While there’s been “a bit of an uptick” in the need for food, they’re seeing a significant rise in the number of local families who need help paying rent and other critical bills due to job losses and illness.
At Project Paul in Keansburg, the largest food pantry in Monmouth County, executive director Sal Cortale said his organization was experiencing an increase in requests for help even before COVID hit. Once people began losing jobs due to the outbreak, their client list grew from 1,100 families to 1,600.
He credits the generosity of the community and the critical support from Fulfill with helping him respond to the emergency. “They’ve been very good. Kim Guadagno is very active and she has many contacts. She really was an asset to have in this kind of environment.”
In Atlantic Highlands, the community food pantry based at the United Methodist Church has also seen an increase in need. Pre-COVID, the food pantry served about 30 families a month. Last spring, that number jumped to 150 families a week. Today, with the help of a successful GoFundMe drive, support from area churches and a $10,000 grant from the NJ Pandemic Relief Fund, they continue to support some 75 families a week. While they are not part of Fulfill, they’ve been able to help area residents make ends meet with donations from residents and businesses. During the summer, many residents dropped off home-grown produce for distribution to families in need.
Like other area pantries, the Atlantic Highlands food pantry has been there for clients who never expected to need them.
One family in town with two young children had just bought a house when the COVID crisis put them on the unemployment rolls, said Ryan Flood, volunteer coordinator of the Atlantic Highlands Food Pantry. “We’re seeing people that probably never in their life envisioned needing any kind of help,” he said.
“We went from feeding poor people to feeding scared people,” said a spokesperson for the all-volunteer Calico Cat Food Pantry in Middletown, which is also a member of Fulfill. The small nonprofit has seen its client list rise from 300 last February to more than 1,000 in November.
“It’s a heartbreaker,” notes Guadagno. “(Super Storm) Sandy was nothing compared to this.”
The article originally appeared in the December 3 – 9, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
