Food distribution helps hundreds prior to Christmas
BUFFALO TWP — On the week before Christmas, the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank gave to hundreds of local families, 12 various food items to help them through the holiday season.
Volunteers delivered the boxes, filled to the brim, to vehicles that drove through a monthly food distribution held Tuesday, Dec. 17, at Lernerville Speedway in Buffalo Township.
“There’s frozen meat, milk, eggs, fresh produce … there’s some oatmeal and cheese today, as well,” distribution supervisor Rachel Martone said.
Volunteers, some from the Butler County-based Community Partnership, placed the food into trunks or backseats of vehicles, serving roughly 350 families at the event.
According to Martone, the speedway is one of three regular distribution sites in Butler County for the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank, with the other two at the Church of God of Prophecy in Parker Township and the Butler City Farmers’ Market.
According to communications specialist Christa Johnson, the food bank has played a role in serving Butler County for 40 years, but their responsibilities in Butler County increased earlier this year when the county’s board of commissioners voted to transfer its food assistance programs to the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank.
These include The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and the State Food Purchase Program (SFPP).
“The TEFAP and SFPP contracts were new this year,” Johnson said. “We have held similar contracts in other counties, so we have high comfortability with meeting the expectations and responsibilities.”
The new contracts came as the food bank’s work, along with the work of volunteers, has become more necessary than ever, Johnson said. She explained that the food bank distributed a total of 4 million pounds of food across the region this past April — nearly 100 tons more than it distributed in April 2020.
Martone said the food bank acquires its food from a variety of sources. In addition to purchasing its own, the food bank receives donations from farms and co-op groups.
Community Partnership was on hand Tuesday to provide assistance, as they routinely do for the food distributions at the speedway and the farmers’ market. Volunteers from the nonprofit unloaded and distributed the food.
“The food arrives on a semi, which needs to be unloaded,” Sandra Curry, president of Community Partnership, said. “We provide the labor to unload it, and we provide some of the labor to hand out the food. We provide some of the on-site coordination.”
Curry says that Community Partnership has partnered with the food bank to handle the distribution at the farmers’ market since 2019, and at Lernerville since 2020.
In addition to Butler, the food bank serves the entire Pittsburgh region of 11 counties, including Lawrence, Armstrong, Indiana, Cambria, Somerset, Fayette, Greene, Washington, Allegheny and Beaver counties.
Martone says one of the best ways to help the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank in its mission to feed the hungry is to volunteer.
She highlighted the food bank’s website, which has a section that lists volunteer opportunities.
Visitors to the website also can make monetary donations to help support the food bank’s costs of purchasing food. According to the homepage, a $200 donation would be enough to provide 600 meals.
The Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank will return to Butler County from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20, at the Church of God of Prophecy, located on McKees Road in Parker Township.
No proof of income is required at the distributions, but those who receive food from the distributions must fill out a form at the event, indicating their need.
