Charity network provides food

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Charity network provides food

Recipients asked to do community service to ‘pay it forward’

by Natalie McGill | Staff Writer

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With piles of fruits and vegetables bound inside red nets and white plastic bags before Linda Landy, Friday was no ordinary food-shopping trip. Walking behind a flatbed instead of a shopping cart, Landy of Temple Hills picked up items for more than 50 people at her church who participate in the SHARE Food Network.

SHARE, which stands for the Self Help and Resource Exchange Food Network, is sponsored by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington and the Federal Association of the Order of Malta. SHARE volunteer Karen ‘‘Jingle” Rhodes said participants receive 13 to 16 grocery items worth $50 for $18 dollars, which includes four to five packs of frozen meat and two to three types of both fresh fruit and vegetables. Rhodes said the menu is picked ahead of time and anyone can participate, regardless of financial status. SHARE purchases food from vendors such as Cooperative Food Sales based in Staunton, Va., and Good Source Solutions in Carlsbad, Calif.

Catholic Charities’ spokesman Erik Salmi said more than 13,000 packages are distributed each month to 350 host sites throughout Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Volunteers at each site bag the groceries and give them out to families. Salmi expected 75 people Friday to finish bagging food and help with distribution and more than 270 to help Saturday.

The Hyattsville warehouse where Landy picked up her food is the Washington, D.C. SHARE Network’s flagship warehouse. Other smaller ones are located in Baltimore, Hagerstown and Hughesville. There is also a warehouse in Fredericksburg, W.Va.

Clients like Landy send in their orders on the second Monday of the month and come on the third Friday of the month to pick up orders. The third Saturday of the month is reserved for host sites to distribute food to families.

Landy said as little as 13 and as many as 20 people come the third Saturday of the month to her church, Antioch Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., to help bag food and give out to families. Landy said despite rising grocery store costs, she expect the summer months to be slow because residents are out of town on vacation. She expects requests to rise during the winter when the church makes more than 100 requests for groceries.

Sidney Anderson, 86, has volunteered with SHARE since it began 18 years ago. Anderson, a member of Washington, D.C.’s St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus, spends his time doing ‘‘the splits,” which involves walking with each client down a row of tables with bagged goods and making sure they get the specified portion of food per delivery.

‘‘I enjoy working with the people,” Anderson said. ‘‘I’m retired military. It’s giving me an outlet, something to do to give food to people in need.”

Christopher Dake, the SHARE Food Network director, said people who participate in SHARE are asked to go out into their own neighborhoods and do community service.

‘‘It doesn’t have to be through SHARE,” Dake said. ‘‘Anything that makes a difference in their community.”

Dake said staff tries to track if participants engage in community service on their own, but it’s mostly based on the honor system.

‘‘It’s a pay it forward type system,” Dake said. ‘‘It’s not about buying affordable food and that being the end of it. There has to be something that makes it a complete circle.”

Dake added SHARE is getting more aggressive in marketing to people in need, particularly because rising costs at the grocery store across the nation are stifling everyone’s wallets.

‘‘SHARE’s kind of like the sleeping giant,” Dake said. ‘‘We need to wake it up and get it out into the community.”

E-mail Natalie McGill nmcgill@gazette.net.