December 22, 1999
Students help fill Christmas baskets
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Swarming through the aisles and 'shopping' with an exuberance usually saved for the playground, 25 fourth-grade students at Immaculate Conception helped fill 40 Christmas baskets for the parish's Food Pantry last Thursday. Filling them in no time flat, the students put together a complete holiday meal for 40 needy families who otherwise would have gone without.
After perishables including a turkey, eggs, bread, potatoes and butter were added on Monday, the baskets were distributed to grateful families that day.
"These people's holidays would be pretty bleak without the basket," said Scott Huggins, social justice coordinator for the Immaculate Conception parish. "We give away special baskets at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter in addition to the year-round pantry, and serve about 160 people per holiday."
Helping people who are hungry is nothing new to the students in Mary Conroy's class. Since the school year began, they have helped stock the pantry every month after parishioners bring donations on Pantry Sunday. The students keep the shelves neat and organized, allowing pantry workers to quickly find what they need when the pantry is open.
For these students, the pantry work is a satisfying task and one in keeping with the school's theme this year: Pray, Reflect and Act. Working in the food pantry to help others brings this lesson home in a personal way for each student.
"We get to help others who don't have food," said Marissa Keep, a student in Conroy's class. "When my family went to San Francisco we saw a lot of people living on the street and I felt really bad for them. I like to help here with the baskets because my friend and I could pick anything you want to give to people for the holidays."
Well, not quite anything. Huggins made up a shopping list for the students, giving quantities and variety needed for three different family sizes. Students checked off their list and filled the Christmas baskets to overflowing, packing in stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, canned cranberries and rolls. Cans of yams, beans and pumpkin were other staples that made their way into the basket.
"It was like a mission, a treasure hunt to go around and find everything," said fourth-grader Brenden Ritola. "It's important for us to do this to help others."
Open year round, the Immaculate Conception Food Pantry is the only area food pantry open in the evenings. Every Tuesday and Thursday from 7-8 p.m., people in need come for some help. The usual client is a working person, either a single parent or one of two working parents, whose paycheck may not stretch the whole month. When the shelves at home get bare, they can come to the Food Pantry - no questions asked - and restock their groceries to help put food on the table until the next paycheck.
The pantry served more than 1,200 families and 4,500 people last year and the numbers for this year will be similar. The pantry relies on donated food and time to keep going, and for the past 15 years of operation has always found enough of both within the parish. They have even managed to meet almost a doubling of demand in the past four years.
"Our demand has grown tremendously since welfare reform in 1996; it went from 2,500 people a year to 4,500," said Huggins, a full-time unpaid volunteer with the church for almost four years.
"Many people you see only once or a few times, when the kid gets sick or a car breaks down and the barely budgeted money is suddenly gone and they are short of food."