Volunteers with the Live Civilly/ Moorestown Ministerium Food Pantry at St. Matthew Lutheran Church opened their pantry doors two additional days on Wednesday, Jan. 30 and Saturday, Feb. 2 to support furloughed federal workers.
The government may be temporarily reopened, but for the furloughed federal workers who went 35 days without a paycheck, it may take just as many days — if not longer — to get back on track. For that reason, volunteers with the Live Civilly/ Moorestown Ministerium Food Pantry at St. Matthew Lutheran Church opened their pantry doors two additional days — one on Wednesday, Jan. 30, and a second scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 2 — to support furloughed federal workers.
“It’s our slogan: ‘people helping people helping people.’ When you’re given an opportunity to help neighbors, to help community workers, it’s important to take the time to do it,” said Kahra Buss, president and CEO of Live Civilly.
The pantry is typically open the first and third Mondays of the month. Buss said Live Civilly recently received a phone call from a pantry volunteer who asked if they might consider opening the pantries additional days, and they agreed immediately. She said from that moment on they turned to their donation resources and got the word out there was an additional need this month.
Buss said hundreds of thousand of federal workers were still expected to show up every day despite not receiving a paycheck. She said many of these workers do not have large savings accounts and are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
“There a lot of people who have to make these really tough decisions on a good day about how to carefully allocate their money,” Buss said. “These are hard-working people.”
She said some had to get additional jobs to maintain there medical expenses, keep food on the table or pay their rent. For that reason, the pantry was open two additional days. Volunteers never ask for information, documentation or anything beyond a name and hometown.
Constance O’Brien, a volunteer at the food pantry, said their hope was that by opening their doors a few extra days, they might be able to help people who might not typically come in. She said the government may have temporarily opened for three weeks, but it will take longer than that for workers to recover.
“It’s hard if you haven’t done this before,” O’Brien said. “It’s a little daunting for people to go food pantries.”
O’Brien said they pride themselves on a strict sense of confidentiality. She said all she asks when people arrive is for the number of people in the person’s family.
The pantry is stocked with non-perishable items, which they collect through a variety of sources, including Moorestown School District food drives, a drop box at the Moorestown Library and donations that are dropped off directly at St. Matthew.
O’Brien said there are currently no plans to keep the expanded hours, but if they find there’s a need, they’ll take a look at adding more. In the meantime, the pantry is constantly collecting non-perishable food and monetary donations for those in need.
“People will say they’re back now, but it takes months to get back on their feet,” O’Brien said.
