Food Bank faces increasing need

In an economy where stretching the dollar as far as it will go is a necessity, more and more local folks are turning to service agencies for help. One of the main sources of assistance in the Sisters area is the Kiwanis Food Bank.

Sisters Kiwanis provides families with an emergency supply of three to four days of food on a once-a-month basis. According to Steve Murray, food bank coordinator at Central Oregon's NeighborImpact, the number of people coming to the Sisters Kiwanis for help has "...gone up over a year ago and over two years ago. Yes, in your community the needs are going up. Yes, throughout Central Oregon the needs are going up," he said.

Sisters Kiwanis food bank manager Garth Tosello agrees.

"The numbers have been higher all year this year than last year's numbers. We've definitely got new families and larger families," he said.

Currently, the food bank serves an average of between 15 and 18 families a week, Tosello told The Nugget.

"We had a couple of weeks in the 20s.... Last year, we were averaging 10 or 12 families a week, 14 at the most," he said.

One of the big changes the food bank is seeing this year is larger families.

"It's a new factor. Before there were some larger families, but they really stood out. Now, it seems like the majority who come in are four, five, six people," said Tosello. "Sometimes there's four adults and three or four kids all in the same household. They are all living in Sisters and Sisters Country."

It takes a significant amount of food to feed these families even for three or four days, Tosello noted.

The food bank does not specifically track whether or not its clients are newcomers or long-time area residents; however, according to Tosello, casual conversation with patrons suggests that many have come to the area within the last few months or year.

The food bank does not track the ethnicity of its patrons, but, according to Tosello, more Hispanic families are coming through its doors.

One Sisters resident, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Nugget that the food bank is helping his family immeasurably. Currently, the man's brother, wife and two children are living with the man and his family while looking for work.

"Feeding eight mouths not four is difficult. I don't make a lot of money. The food bank saves my life," he said.

Since clients are only allowed to access the food bank once a month, the vast majority use the service as a stopgap measure to get their family through a specific crises or to their next pay check.

"Most of them when they come in start talking to you, and you can tell they've got something going on with their work or (they are) in between jobs or this crisis or that crisis," said Tosello.

The majority also see their need for help from the food bank as temporary.

"I would say that kind of holds true because they tend to disappear after a few months of coming to the food bank and are replaced by somebody else," Tosello said. "It's not real common to see somebody 12 months out of the year."

On occasion families stay away for a year or more and then when they have a need return, Tosello added.

"I don't know if that means they moved or their situation improved and got worse or what," he said.

The Sisters Kiwanis Food Bank is a member of the Oregon Food Bank, an association of more than 900 Oregon and Clark County, Washington agencies that work to eliminate hunger and its root causes.

Almost 80 percent of the food that stocks the Kiwanis food bank's shelves comes from NeighborImpact. Some of it is purchased at good prices. The rest is free through the United States Department of Agriculture. The remaining approximate 20 percent comes from generous community donations. These donations are very important to the project's success and provide items the food bank would not otherwise have, said Tosello.

The food bank is located on the corner of Main Avenue and Oak Street.