American Rescue Workers expect greater need for assistance

In the midst of the holiday celebrations where there seems to be goodies everywhere to feast on, it's easy to forget that for some in the community, food is not plentiful. To help those people, the American Rescue Workers (ARW) is planning a holiday drive-thru only food distribution from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Dec. 20.

Having served 750 meals at their Thanksgiving Community Dinner, a number almost double what they had expected, they are preparing for twice as many people as they had at last year's Christmas distribution.

"We've been monitoring the increased need based on the number of clients that we're serving in our Social Services Center Food Pantry," said Valerie Fessler, director of development and community engagement at ARW.

"Looking at the numbers from October of 2022 to October 2023 told us that we would have at least double the number of people being served, most likely coming to the holiday food distribution this year. So last year, we distributed holiday food boxes to 600 families in the community and this year, we are preparing for 1200 to make sure that we're meeting the community need," she said.

Many of the people coming to the non-profit's food pantry are using the source for food for the first time.

"We're starting to see people coming to our food pantry who have never needed to seek additional food resources before," she said.

She attributed this to "a combination of increased utility bills, inflation as well as people just not being able to make ends meet. We're just seeing about double the number of people this year that we were seeing last year this time coming to us for a little bit of assistance with food."

The Christmas food distribution will include either a ham or a turkey, a 10-pound box of produce, a bag with milk, eggs, butter and bread as well as a box of dry goods to be used to prepare the holiday meal.

The food for the distribution is sourced in collaboration with the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank on behalf of ARW.

There is no pre-registration for the event and food will be distributed on a first come, first served basis. The Christmas dinner fixings will be handed out at ARW's Social Services Center, 337 Bridge St. There will be volunteers outside to assist with traffic.

In addition to the food distribution, ARW will have a Christmas Dinner from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Christmas Day. This will be served similar to the one at Thanksgiving at the ARW's furniture donation dock at 643 Elmira St. Those wanting a meal can either drive up or walk up.

For those needing assistance on a more consistent basis, ARW's food pantry is open at the Social Service Center, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Mondays from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.; and Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Fessler noted that the evening hours were added because they've seen an increase of working families in need of the service.

During the pandemic, ARW discontinued their annual bellringer program, which had been a source of income, and it has not been revived.

"The best way that people in the community can help support this event is to make a donation directly to American Rescue Workers, either on our website at ARWWilliamsport.org, or simply by mailing a check to 643 Elmira Street in Williamsport. That is certainly our greatest need this time of year," Fessler said.

As with the Thanksgiving dinner, Chef Mark Williams will be preparing about 50 turkeys for Christmas Day. Still, feeding the extra 300 people at Thanksgiving was a challenge.

"We were so fortunate because we get so many retail food donations from the community partners that we use that we had backup foods to make on the fly. We were serving the food so quickly, so we started with brussel sprouts and then we went to all the corn that was in our pantry and then we went to all the carrots that were in our pantry. We went through almost 500 pounds of potatoes and had to unfortunately start going to the instant potatoes but we thought at that point it was better to serve folks instant potatoes than to not serve them at all," Fessler said.

"We were really digging in the pantry and Mark luckily had two volunteers in the kitchen with pretty extensive kitchen experience who were able to jump in and just continue to prepare food as we're handing out food and also serving our shelter residents. It was quite an undertaking for the kitchen team," she added.

In addition, they delivered 57 Thanksgiving Day meals to individuals who were homebound and didn't have anyone to come and pick up their meals. Anyone needing their Christmas Day dinner delivered should contact the ARW office in advance to make arrangements.