EDITORIAL: It’s always the season of giving at food pantries

Joyful excess is an enduring theme of Christmas in America. It’s the season for spending generously, or extravagantly, on gifts and elaborate meals. Economic data show this year’s Christmas shopping season is aglow with robust consumer spending in a zooming economy, and not just on stocking stuffers. Carmakers are running TV ads suggesting that a new SUV would make a terrific gift for a spouse.

The giving and getting that results from all of this makes a lot of people happy, which is the point of this aspect of the holidays. It would be wonderful if all Americans could take part in it, but that is not reality.

Reality is that just putting food on the table is a struggle for millions of people in this country. More than 14% of Americans, 47 million out of a population of 330 million, experienced food insecurity in 2023, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA defines food insecurity as lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life. In a recent study, the agency found that millions of families with children were so financially strapped they had to skip meals at times.

It happens in Ozaukee County—and in surprising numbers. Food insecurity here can be measured by the number of families and individuals that depend on the generosity of food pantries for the groceries they need for basic sustenance. Two that operate in the heart of the county a few miles from each other in Port Washington and Saukville demonstrate the growing need.

The Ozaukee Food Alliance in Saukville has served nearly 2,900 individual clients this year. The Food Pantry of Port Washington provides food for as many as 130 clients a week.

These are sobering statistics in a county that is frequently described as one of the most affluent in Wisconsin.

And yet, there is a positive side to those numbers: They are emblematic of the remarkable efforts of the donors, volunteers and leaders who make the food pantries in this county an uplifting force. Powered by empathy and compassion, this is a high ideal of charity provided at its most basic level—feeding the hungry—and it speaks volumes about the character of the people of Ozaukee communities.

Most of the recipients of this charity are people struggling to lead normal lives. Like their more well-off neighbors, they have jobs and roofs over their heads, but their incomes are not adequate to meet the combined costs of two essentials of life, food and shelter. Two trouble spots in the otherwise sound economy—the inflated prices of groceries and the soaring cost of housing—can be a particularly crushing burden on low-income families.

Various demographic studies have found that about 5% of the population of Ozaukee County lives in poverty, with a total of 23% at the combined level of poverty/low income. The percentage of children up to 17 years old living in poverty-level households in the county is reported to be 4.6%.

The federal guideline for poverty is $31,200 or less annual income for a family of four and $15,000 for individuals. Low income is defined as 150% of the poverty level. The poverty rate in Ozaukee County is lower that the national average, and yet it translates to about 5,000 people living in poverty.

The pantries encounter a variety of help seekers, including the truly destitute. In an Ozaukee Press profile, Sara Pashak, president of the Food Alliance board, spoke of a client who lives in her car and showers at Kwik Stop in Belgium. Her organization has also made a special mission out of helping Spanish-speaking migrant workers who travel to the area to do field work and live in temporary quarters in Belgium.

The overall mission of the food pantries might be described as charity with dignity. Mindful that some people perceive a stigma in being “on the dole,” the organizations communicate a mantra that there is no shame in accepting free food when you are in need. At the Food Alliance, clients are invited to select items displayed in aisles, as though they are shopping in a grocery store. The pantries are high-volume charities, distributing thousands of pounds of food weekly. Space needs are so great that both pantries have outgrown their original sites.

The Food Alliance, founded in a Saukville church, bought and remodeled a commercial building and now operates out of a 15,000-square foot facility. The Food Pantry of Port, which has distributed food for many years at the St. John XXXIII parish site, has purchased the former Aurora clinic building on Highway 33 to be its new quarters.

This may sound a bit corporate, and the pantries are surely striving to operate with businesslike efficiency, but at heart this is just people helping people. The two pantries together have more than 100 volunteers doing just that.

The pantries do some minimal vetting to verify need. The Food Alliance asks for an estimate of family income and the Port Food Pantry requests documentation that income is below 150% of the poverty level. Still, it is essentially a matter of ask and you shall receive.

The pantries are nonprofit organizations that depend on donations of funds and food to carry on their work, and fundraising is an essential element of their operations. But what really defines the food pantries is fundamental human kindness.

The board president of the Food Alliance expressed it in a single sentence when she told a Press reporter: “If you want to restore your faith in humanity, come hang out with us for a while.”