Pressure on charity rises
By BRIAN SLUPSKI - bslupski@nwherald.com
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| Northern Illinois Food Bank volunteer team leader George Sundell of Wheaton sorts a package of frozen gound beef in the St. Charles facility. NIFB serves Boone, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson, Will, and Winnebago counties. (H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@nwherald.com) |
CRYSTAL LAKE – As McHenry County’s population has grown over the past two decades, the number of poor and hungry people also has increased.
As of 2007, there were at least 16,566 people living in poverty in McHenry County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The recession and an unemployment rate that has hovered near 10 percent for much of the past year has exacerbated the problem.
“McHenry County, unfortunately, has been a growth area for us,” said Stephen D. Ericson, director of food and volunteer services for the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
The food bank supplies about 537 agencies – food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens – throughout northern Illinois. In the past 12 months, the food bank has distributed more than 29 million pounds of food to those agencies, including more than 1.7 million pounds in McHenry County.
The food bank essentially serves as a supplier to nonprofit agencies, allowing local groups to focus on serving their clients and worry less about acquiring, storing and shipping food. Also, the food bank can do things that smaller agencies can’t. It has more storage capacity and refrigerated trucks that allow it to acquire and distribute even perishable food items, such as meat.
“The food we receive from the food bank is coded properly, packaged properly, it’s ready to go,” said Andrea Franzen, director of the McHenry FISH Pantry.
The price to member agencies is about 8 to 14 cents a pound, and that is primarily to cover the transportation cost.
“They are extremely important to what we do,” said Marilyn Georgy, a volunteer and the former president of the Crystal Lake Food Pantry. “They also are the agency that distributes the free food we get from the government.”
The food bank has three locations: Rockford, St. Charles and Park City. Every day trucks from the food bank pick up perishable food from grocery stores. Grocery stores code their food and it must be sold by a specific day. Although the food still is good, it is removed from store shelves. The food bank has worked out an agreement with stores such as Jewel-Osco, Sam’s Club, and Wal-Mart to pick up that food.
“Jewel was the first chain in the country to support the program,” Ericson said. “They allowed us to pick up meat.”
Since 2000, the amount of food recovered through the program has grown from 23,374 pounds to more than 4.6 million pounds a year. Last year, 200,000 pounds of that meat found its way to McHenry County. The meat is repackaged, inspected and sorted. Meat that can’t be used is discarded – destined for a wild animal sanctuary.
“We try not to put anything in a landfill that we don’t have to,” said Dave Korczykowski, food resource-recovery manager for the food bank.
The food bank was founded in Wheaton in 1983. Its headquarters is in St. Charles and it also has branches in Park City and Rockford. It is rapidly running out of space in St. Charles and organizers are raising money to build a new facility. Food bank officials hope to break ground in Geneva in May 2010. The food bank now supplements its food storage space with three trailers at a cost of about $6,000 a month.
“If we are going to keep up with demand, we are going to have to move to a bigger building,” said Sarah Slavenas, communications manager for the food bank.
Aside from the food recovery program, the food bank also receives donations from area grocery stores and from companies such as Sara Lee. The food bank’s first truck came as a donation from Kraft. The food bank also receives about 20 percent of its food from the government and buys another 20 percent.
One essential ingredient is the work of volunteers. Last year, more than 10,000 volunteers worked 60,000 hours for the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
“We would not be here without them,” Ericson said.
