Kinship Community Food Center is urging the public to support its efforts to fight hunger as it deals with a severe shortage of food products at its Riverwest food distribution site.
An email sent to supporters on Tuesday contained the subject line: “Our Food Shelves are Empty!” The message included photos showing nearly bare shelves at the center.
Kinship noted in the message that it experienced a 40% increase in the number of new families it served last year.
“Along with this influx, there has been a shift in the inventory our traditional food suppliers have available so the quantity and variety we are receiving is less consistent than in the past,” the message stated. “Coupling the increased demand with this limited supply has required that we purchase food, thankfully at cost from our partners, to be there for our neighbors.”
The factors have strained Kinship’s resources, spokeswoman Amanda Fahrendorf said.
“We’re very thankful for our sources, like Hunger Task Force, but even with that there are still some gaps that are occurring,” she said.
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High food prices remain problematic and continue to drive the need for Kinship’s services, Fahrendorf said.
“We’re not exactly sure of all of the factors but some of our best guesses are that food prices are increasing, which can be significant for somebody who is trying to live paycheck to paycheck and manage a lot of other everyday expenses,” she said. “Also, within the last year some of the pandemic relief and assistance that was available started to shift and then went away altogether, which put a lot of our families into a different circumstance where they had to come here more often, or it has led more new families to come.”
Many families who rely on Kinship are eligible for food stamps and are working full-time or multiple jobs to care for their families but still find that they need to turn to the organization to supplement their grocery purchases, she said.
Kinship Community Food Center is a Catholic nonprofit formerly known as the Riverwest Food Pantry, which is led by Executive Director Vincent Noth.
Kinship is urging the community to support the purchase of food for the families it serves during this critical period through financial donations or by organizing food or hygiene drives at businesses, schools, places of worship or neighborhood, civic or social groups. Kinship will provide materials and bins for any such drives.
Financial donations are of special importance in allowing Kinship to purchase perishable items such as dairy products and eggs.
“A big part of what we believe is important and one of the gaps that we are seeing is in the variety of food that we have,” she said. “To give dignity back to a lot of the people who we serve, it’s very important to try and create an experience that is like a grocery store, and as much as we possibly can provide a different variety of food for people to choose from instead of the same off-brands of items like applesauce that we might normally have available.”
That sentiment is reiterated in the message Kinship sent to supporters.
“We need your help to ensure the food we make available to our neighbors is not only abundant, but healthy and includes a variety of choices,” the email stated. “Think of what you would want to bring home from the grocery store for your own family.”
Individual donations of food items are also being accepted from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Saturdays at Kinship’s site at 924 E. Clarke St.
If you’d like to donate, visit fundraise.givesmart.com. To organize a food drive or for other ways to donate, visit Kinship’s website at www.kinshipmke.org/donate.
