CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
Did you know that roughly one-third of Fredonia’s children are eligible for either free or reduced-priced lunches?
According to Dr. Cynthia Lundquist, the reverend for the Fredonia Presbyterian Church, the federal government considers 37 percent of the Fredonia children “to be living within some sense a restricted income or a limited income.”
This troubling statistic led Lundquist to create the Fredonia Food Pantry in 2014 in partnership with the Dunkirk Rural Ministry. Before the Fredonia Food Pantry was created, the Dunkirk Rural Ministry was the main agency that fed those in Fredonia in need. Lundquist said that roughly 20 percent of the people that the ministry helped with food came from Fredonia.
“The pantry came out of an awareness that Fredonia was facing some new challenges with the closing of one of the major employers — [the] Carriage House. We learned about that earlier in 2014 that Carriage House would be closing, from that we knew there would be more people that would be struggling. So we felt it would be helpful that we should open a food pantry,” said Lundquist.
“As we made that decision — and did more research of course — we also [became] more sensitized to the fact that there were already people in Fredonia that were in need: the elderly population on fixed income, and we became aware that students at the college — particularly the ones living off campus — because they didn’t have the food program, that some of them were in need as well.”
Lundquist mentioned that she really thought creating a food pantry just to serve Fredonia would be very helpful because some students don’t have cars, and some people in Fredonia are not comfortable enough to go to Dunkirk. She mentioned that the pantry started the Feeding Fredonia Challenge last year to help collect food to help feed Fredonia’s citizens in need.
“Students living off campus — many of them are having real trouble making ends meet and living on Ramen Noodles,” said Lundquist. She also mentioned that so far, the Fredonia Food Pantry has not yet served a university student and wants to get the message out to change that.
Lundquist explained just exactly how the Fredonia Food Pantry and the Feeding Fredonia Challenge works. The Presbyterian Church collects all of the donated food in the area and then store it in the Rural Ministry. She mentioned how there is a lot of storage required for the food and the church does not have the room. The Rural Ministry also deals with administrative things, such as watching expiration dates and agency approval from the government.
The Rural Ministry bags and sorts the food and returns it to the church. The church then has a monthly event distributing the food to people in the area; they offer free coffee and cookies as well.
She said that they only ask for a name, a general idea of the people in the house and an address. The data is only used for the Rural Ministry to report to the government.
One bag of food consists of a balanced amount of the major food groups people need.
According to Mike Lemieux, the director of Campus Life who is working with the church for the Feeding Fredonia challenge, the closing of Carriage House — one of Fredonia’s largest former employers — meant that Fredonia lost between 400 and 500 jobs.
“As a lot of the businesses are struggling, I think there is a need. I know that the Presbyterian Church is seeing an increased need. We know that the food kitchen in Dunkirk is feeding lots of people three meals a day now, where it was used to be one or two meals,” said Lemieux.
Lemieux mentioned that Campus Life has another event called Who’s Hungry — similar to the Feeding Fredonia Challenge — that they’re planning. He said that most of the campus organizations will feature a link to this donation event on their websites. He is looking for volunteers for these events to help collect the donations.
Last year Feeding Fredonia, according to Lundquist, raised 6,000 pounds of food overall. Four hundred pounds of food came from the university and the Fredonia Central School District received 2,400 pounds.
With the success of last year’s challenge, Lundquist and Lemieux really hope to expand on it this year.
Lundquist mentioned that she has gotten 75 local businesses to agree to donate to the challenge and that they are excited to help out. Some of these businesses include Fred’s, the Fredonia Vapor Co., Fredonia Food Mart, the Fredonia Police, Fredonia Opera House and the East End Salon.
They are looking for food that is canned and has a shelf life, such as canned vegetables, fruit, meat, rice, cereal, beans and peanut butter. There will be dropoff spots at the Williams Center, the residence halls, the academic buildings and the library.
The goal this year for the challenge is to collect at least 5.5 tons of food.
“The need is real. [The] food is going … it’s not a guess that maybe we need it — we need it,” said Lundquist.