With food supplies dwindling, shelter appeals for donations

The massive, intermittent calamity always overshadows the everyday crisis.

So people forget that it doesn’t take a hurricane to leave families hungry, homeless and destitute.

The need doesn’t dissipate along with the public’s attention: Columbus’ Valley Rescue Mission now is appealing for donations to replenish its food pantry, where shelves once stocked with nonperishable goods are nearly bare.

This is not atypical for the season: Donations usually fall off over the summer, and pick up as fall and winter holidays near and folks refocus on helping the needy, said Mitzi Oxford, the mission’s development director.

But with one in five families living below the poverty level and the dominant demographic in homelessness now a single mother in her mid-20s with two children, shelters can’t wait until Thanksgiving to replenish their supplies. They need help now.

And while national organizations aiding storm victims primarily need money – donated supplies require storage, shipping and distribution – the shelter welcomes any nonperishable foods people feel they can part with, and any fresh hygiene products.

The mission uses such donations not only for meals served in-house, but for food bags given families and individuals living off-site. They have a place to stay, but lack the means to adequately feed themselves and their dependents each day.

The mission tries to provide them with food bags, and what it can put in those bags now has dwindled along with the supply.

Instead of offering all the provisions needed to create a full meal for a family, it has to reduce that to a snack such as breakfast bars, a can of tuna, a can of green beans, and a box of macaroni.

That’s one bag for an individual, Oxford said: A family of four would get four bags, and typically the shelter issues 125 food bags to feed about 50 families each week.

“It goes really quickly,” she said. “We’re just low on everything.”

The mission serves 181,881 meals each year, she said. Its rooms are almost always full, particularly in its women’s and children’s center, where occupants are staying longer than they used to, because what work they can find usually doesn’t pay enough for housing and childcare.

It has not had an influx of storm refugees, but it could, depending on how current events unfold. Sometimes those fleeing storms have only the essential possessions they brought with them, and that doesn’t include money for lodging.

“They’ve got to have the wherewithal to do that,” Oxford said of renting motel rooms. “Sometimes they come here looking for shelter.”

Anyone who’d like to donate may drop supplies off on the north side of the mission’s main office at 2903 Second Ave. The telephone number is 706-322-8267.

The shelter will provide bins to church groups, schools or other organizations who want to host a food drive, Oxford said. They can email rescue@valleyrescue.com or go online to www.valleyrescuemission.org.

This story was originally published September 6, 2017 at 5:28 PM with the headline "With food supplies dwindling, shelter appeals for donations."