Readers Care Fund: Cash helps fill the gaps for food banks

Calvin Bratt
Tribune editor

  LYNDEN -- Not a scrap of food gets wasted at the Project Hope food bank. That's more important than ever in these challenging economic times.
  Before 8 a.m. every weekday morning, lead volunteer Alvin Bajema makes his rounds of Lynden's grocery stores and loads into his pickup truck the food items that can no longer be sold to the general public.
  But the fruits and vegetables and doughnuts (maybe slightly past their prime) are still very good and safe to be eaten by the 1,200 folks served by Project Hope.
  In the large kitchen last week Wednesday, Deja Robins and Sharon Hendricks -- two of about 35 volunteers -- deftly sorted though the apples, potatoes and more, putting some directly into individual plastic bags, some into a free-choice box for the food bank entrance, and the worst for a local hog farm.
  By 9:30 a.m. the first clients will be showing up and the callers for food will keep coming for five and a half hours.
  "We never send people away empty," said Robins.   It's a routine that is repeated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for sure at the facility on South B.C. Avenue. There will be extra packing of a Thanksgiving meal for each family as well.
  Part of a very organized Whatcom County food distribution network, Project Hope is assigned to cover the Lynden area (98264 ZIP code) for food -- and an even larger area when it comes to helping with emergency essentials such as clothing, blankets, hygiene items and winter home heating assistance.
  Project Hope is the recipient of the 2008 Readers Care Fund of the Lynden Tribune and Ferndale Record-Journal.
  Executive director Jim Grennell reports that the need is up, as everyone copes with an economy in downturn, workers losing jobs, savings evaporated.
  Food banks are seeing seniors or the working poor who never thought they'd need to ask for free food and who may have been able to give to a food bank a few years ago, he said.
  Grennell said Lynden is a "giving community" and the inflow of food and cash throughout the year is enough that he doesn't have to make special appeals.
  Schools, churches, youth groups, postal workers and various businesses all do their part with food and clothing drives. The Hope Chest clothing store in downtown Lynden is an offshoot of Project Hope.
  But he emphasized that cash is needed to "fill the gaps" with perishable food that can't be stockpiled or for buying at discounts that come along through the Bellingham Food Bank or Northwest Harvest.
  "We just bought 600 pounds of margarine the other day at just $1.15 a pound," Grennell said. "We buy a lot of eggs."
  Project Hope has the use of both a large walk-in cooler and a similar freezer room.
  Clients come in on an every-other-week schedule and receive up to 70 pounds of food drawn from the variety that comes in from stores or is stacked on the shelves of the big pantry room.
  Safeway and the Food Pavilion are the prime sources of left-over food. Others are Starbucks (pastries), Fresh Breeze Dairy (milk products).
  Project Hope is in its 39th year of operation, and is run by a board of directors from about 10 supporting churches.
  E-mail Calvin Bratt at editor@lyndentribune.com.