Church uses food bank to help rural part of county

Published 9:18 am Thursday, April 28, 2011

CHESAPEAKE — They thought they were ready when the doors opened at the new food bank at the Greasy Ridge Church of Christ.

But the volunteers got a big surprise.

“We had only prepared for 24 families,” Dave Dunfee Jr., one of the organizers, said. “Eleven people had confirmed they would be there. We prepared for double. By the first hour, we had given away everything we had planned.”

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So Dunfee sent for reinforcements so that 51 families or 180 individuals could get one week’s worth of food.

“The need was way more than we ever guessed,” he said.

This past Friday was the first time for the church’s food pantry, which has been an idea the congregation has considered for some time.

“The church had had one some time back, but it was just a small canned goods pantry,” Dunfee said.

A push came from Dunfee’s sister, Andie Leffingwell, who is involved in helping the needy in Huntington, W.Va., and told her brother about the Huntington Food Bank.

“Part of its mission is to serve Lawrence County,” Dunfee said. “(She said) You ought to look into it for those out in the county, Symmes Valley, the far end of Chesapeake and Fairland school districts, where they had no one serving people in need.’ The church had been talking about resurrecting that food bank. It all came together at one time.”

For its inaugural day, the food pantry gave away boxes filled with breakfast cereal, crackers, six cans of soup, six cans of vegetables, two bottles of Gatorade, a variety of frozen meats from hamburgers, hot dogs, pork chops, chicken to turkey, all coming from donations from area grocery stores and discount houses.

Stores will give to the Huntington food bank breads, meats and other perishable items still on their shelves when the expiration dates come due. The food bank will then freeze those items and redistribute them to area food pantries.

Volunteers took 3,500 pounds of boxes of food and divided it into family-size portions.

“All kinds of breads that came from a lot of grocery store shelves, produce, strawberries, oranges, bananas that we were able to get from the food bank,” Dunfee said. “It is basically the local grocery stores helping local folks. We are kind of the conduit that picks it up and boxes it up in family-size portions and gives it out.”

The mission of the pantry is to provide families with enough food to get them through the last week of the month. That’s why it will be open on the Friday between the fifth and eighth days from the end of the month.

“Give them a week’s worth of food the last week of the month,” he said. “That will help them through before they get their checks.”

The pantry can purchase the food for a rate significantly less than the price in a grocery story. Dunfee estimates supplying the 51 boxes cost about $600.

The pantry will also deliver to shut-ins with their church van as well as provide transportation to the pantry.

To maintain its status with the food bank, participants are asked for basic information, but there are no requirements for getting the food.

“This is a community thing,” Dunfee said. “You don’t have to be a member of the church. The only requirement is that you are hungry. We target rural Lawrence County because nobody is there.”

The pantry will next be open on Friday, May 27 from 3 to 6 p.m. For more information contact the church at 740-867-8076 or the pastor, Tom Miller, by email at tom@greasyridge.com.