Interfaith meeting continues food discussion on April 15

After a hiatus of several months, the Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative will hold a public meeting on Friday, April 15, at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of North Adams Eagle Street Room.

We will continue the discussion of food insecurity, the topic of the April 8, Northern Berkshire Community Coalition Forum. Topics on April 15 likely will include recent trends we've seen at the Friendship Center Food Pantry, the upcoming Letter Carrier Food Drive on Saturday, May 14, better coordination of the work of area food programs, the efforts in which we're involved to return affordable food sales in some form to the former Price Chopper store on State Road in North Adams, the Massachusetts Food Trust, and possible innovations in distributing food from the Friendship Center.

All are welcome to attend. Our meeting begin with a time of silent prayer and optional faith sharing. For more information, call Mark at 413-664-0130.

At the Coalition forum, volunteers held signs showing the different levels of food insecurity. Below, Abby Getman of the Food Bank showed 2010 census results about North Adams. The more red the area, the more poverty. Northeastern North Adams was one of the most red areas.

This food insecurity discussion will be even more interesting after what happened at the Coalition forum on Friday. Having examined 2010 U.S. Census data, the four representatives of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts present said there is a significant number of unserved people in North Adams. They are looking to get more food into the city.

For me, this raises a number of questions, and I hope we can discuss this at our April 15 meeting. Without going into much detail here, I will note that the number of households the Friendship Center Food Pantry serves each week peaked in 2014 into early 2015, then leveled off. In 2016, the number of households served per week has slipped to a notable extent.

For our April Board of Directors meeting, I went through our records and compiled this interesting statistic: Average number of household visits for the first 14 weeks of the year: 2012: 114. 2013: 143. 2014: 140. 2015: 151. 2016: 139.

Why this decline? An improving economy? People moving out of the area? We really don’t know. This said, I am sure we are missing some people, particularly shut-ins. This is why in March we have formed a sub-committee of the Board of Directors to examine how we can better help the homeless and the question of home deliveries for shut-ins.

The number of households served at the Friendship Center Food Pantry rose constantly from its opening in February, 2011, reaching a peak in 2014 (green line) and early 2015 (orange line). Since then, numbers have leveled off and dropped even more in the first few months of 2016.

Research is needed. Is the 2010 census adequate to 2016? Does the city, which does a census by mail every year, have better numbers, at least for population? Do we need to be open another day of the week? Can the Food Bank’s mobile food pantry help?

Is the stigma against receiving help overly operative in the city? How can we — and other groups, such as the Berkshire Food Project and the  Dream Center — get more food to people?

Please come to our discussion on Friday and help us figure this out. And, of course, there are other related topics on the agenda, such as the May 14 letter carrier food drive, the effort to get affordable and healthy food sales back to Price Chopper and better cooperation between area food programs.

Thanks and God Bless,

Mark