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Nearly 100 Families Feast on Community’s Kindness
By
Terri McLean
 FLEMINGSBURG,
Ky., (Nov. 22, 2006) – As a line of vehicles inched their way
around Flemingsburg Baptist Church, community volunteers
methodically loaded each with all the fixings for a traditional
Thanksgiving feast – turkey, stuffing mix, potatoes, vegetables
and more.
“This is a life-saver,” said one of the vehicle’s occupants as
she looked over her bounty.
“It’s a blessing,” said another, struggling for the right words
to express her gratitude.
Without that outpouring of kindness from the Fleming County
community and assistance from the mobile pantry program of God’s
Pantry Food Bank in Lexington, they and others might not have
been able to put a Thanksgiving meal on the table this year.
Even providing regular daily meals is difficult for the nearly
100 people who waited patiently in line that cold November day.
“It is hard to realize that there are people going hungry,” said
Donna Fryman, family and consumer sciences agent for the
University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service in Fleming
County and one of the organizers of the Thanksgiving food drive.
But they are, she said. “There are folks who just can’t make
ends meet right now or they just don’t have the resources.”
Worse yet, Fryman added, many of those people are underserved. A
high poverty rate – 18.6 percent of Fleming County residents
live at or below the poverty level – and a lack of emergency
food resources means there is not enough assistance to go
around.
Perhaps that explains why Fryman, her food assistance staff and
other community leaders “jumped at the chance” to shore up
Fleming County’s emergency food resources by participating in
the mobile pantry program. It will travel to Flemingsburg each
month for a year to supplement the community’s efforts but also
to help leaders establish a stable food program that will be
able to meet the need on its own when the year is up.
If the success of the Thanksgiving food drive is any indication,
Fleming County appears to be up to the challenge of building a
self-sustaining emergency food program. Church groups, schools,
youth organizations, businesses and individuals from throughout
the rural northeastern
Kentucky county pitched in and, in just a month’s time, donated
enough food for 100 families to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast.
“Often through this collaborative effort, people are able to see
the resources various parties possess that individually limit
what can be done for the community but collectively enable great
things to be accomplished,” said Marian Blanchard, executive
director of God’s Pantry, which provides food to more than 350
programs and agencies in 49 counties of central and eastern
Kentucky.
This is the fifth year for the mobile pantry program, which has
already provided a year of service to Bath, Boyle, Harrison,
Jessamine, Leslie, Lincoln, Johnson, Morgan, Nicholas, Mercer,
Wolfe and Rockcastle counties. Along with Fleming County, the
mobile pantry is currently serving Anderson County, and another
county may be added after the holidays, Blanchard said.
In each county served, officials from God’s Pantry initiate the
program through the county’s Extension agents – people such as
Fryman, who “know their communities very well and are very
helpful at pulling together folks for an initial meeting at
which we discuss the opportunity and the issue of hunger in
their community,” Blanchard said.
“We can bring all the organizations together that can help and
try to figure out how to work together better,” Fryman added.
That’s just what Fryman did after God’s Pantry officials
approached her about the mobile pantry a few months ago.
“We got together and said, yes, we want to take advantage of
this program, make use of the opportunity we’ve been given,” she
said.
Key to the program’s success is the willingness of the community
to “go above and beyond” what the mobile pantry provides each
month, Fryman said. “This month we went beyond in providing a
Thanksgiving meal for each recipient. We’re talking about $1,500
worth of food – at least.”
“You’ve got to give credit to the local effort,” said Wayne
Wesley, a retired Kentucky State Police crime lab chemist who
sits on the God’s Pantry board and is a volunteer driver for the
mobile pantry. “A lot of times it takes care of the need … But
every once in a while they need more peanut butter, they need
more beans. That’s what we’re there for. We don’t discourage the
local effort; we just want to make sure that they have a
well-rounded food service for people that is well balanced.”
With Extension’s involvement, recipients also benefit from the
educational resources that UK provides through its outreach
organization. Along with the turkeys given out recently in
Flemingsburg, each recipient also received step-by-step
instructions for cooking the turkey, for instance.
“What we try to do, too, at the same time is try to provide
nutrition education along with the food,” said Pam Sigler,
Extension associate for family and consumer sciences and
president of the Kentucky Food Security Partnership. “We work on
budgeting, we work on how to stretch the dollar, and we work on
how to handle food correctly and safely.”
Although the mobile pantry program has been in Fleming County
only twice so far, it has been successful in providing awareness
about hunger and initiating discussions about establishing a
stable food program there.
“Hopefully, this will help us work out some of the problems so
that folks can get the food they need,” Fryman said. |
Contact: Donna Fryman, 606-845-4641
Pam Sigler, 859-257-2948, ext. 80324 |
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The UK College
of Agriculture, through its land-grant mission, reaches across
the commonwealth with teaching, research and extension
to enhance the lives of Kentuckians. |
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