“It actually equates to upwards of several thousand people, depending on how many families are in their household — times it by two or three or 10,” said Jennifer Rempe, director of development and community engagement at ARW.

“We did a thousand people last year at this distribution so we upped it this year, just to help around the edges. Probably the need is way more, but with our budget, we could do 1,200 families this year,” she said.

Each month about 1,000 families are fed through ARW’s food pantry, Rempe said, making it the largest pantry in the area.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette American Rescue Workers Business Administrator Dawn Astin keeps traffic moving at the American Rescue Workers annual Holiday Food Distribution at ARW in Williamsport on Friday.

For their boxes, clients could either choose a ham or a turkey. There was a produce bag, which weighs about 10 pounds, with potatoes, carrots and onions and a dry goods box with cans of vegetables, some pasta, potatoes flakes and the ingredients for stuffing. In addition there was milk, eggs and a large loaf of bread.

Pre-registration was required in order to receive the boxes, which was new this year.

“This year we needed to do that as a safety precaution, just in case, downstream, we need to contact people for different reasons,” Rempe said.

“Our phone has been ringing quite a bit and we think that there are a lot of people — I mean 1,000 families a month are utilizing our services — and we’ve been pre-registering people since September for this event,” she said

“So there are people that are coming to our food pantry on a regular basis every two months, maybe once a month, so they signed up. But unfortunately the people that don’t use our services regularly, and it may be they just use us at Christmas time because they need help around the edges – you know that’s a big meal – and so those people probably might not have heard that they needed to pre-register.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette Williamsport Mayor Derek Slaughter places food into the back of a vehicle while volunteering at the American Rescue Workers annual Holiday Food Distribution on Friday. State Representatives Jamie Flick and Joe Hamm also volunteered at the event.

The Rescue Workers have worked out a way that those people can still obtain the food needed. They were being given information so that they could come to the food pantry Monday to receive some extra food for their families for Christmas.

On Christmas Day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., ARW will offer a drive-thru where people can pick up a hot meal to-go.

Rempe pointed out that there is a misconception in any community about who is getting food.

Clients at ARW’ food pantry usually fall into the category of what used to be called “the working poor” or what is now known as Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed or A.L.I.C.E.

“They might be working, and they have a family of four, but they’re only making $8 or $10 an hour…and their rent is $1,200 and it’s really hard for them to be able to provide for their family and put food on the table,” Rempe said.

She cited statistics that show 60 percent of Americans are one emergency away from a homeless crisis.

“You go to work every day. You’re faithful, you have a work ethic, and you maybe have two kids, and your rent is $800 and and if your car engine goes out, or the radiator goes out in your car and you have some sort of financial crisis like that, or maybe you trip and fall on the sidewalk and you’re out of work for a couple weeks, it’s like a domino effect that just everything then spirals out of control, and that is what leads to a homeless crisis,” Rempe said.

“If you’re a food insecure individual or family, and you’re living on that edge, on that precipice, it’s that one emergency — that’s what we see here. That’s primarily, who’s coming through these lines — people that are honest to goodness working class people,” she said.

“On the other side of that is, there’s a ton of people in the City of Williamsport, in the county of Lycoming that live in their car. They, honest to goodness, live in their car. And we see that in the food pantry, where they have experienced that financial crisis, and they, for one reason or another, have been evicted. Maybe it’s through no fault of their own. Maybe it is because they didn’t pay their rent regardless, they’re living in their car sometimes with kids, and it’s hard to see that. We refer to both homelessness and food insecurity as the invisible problem, because it’s really hard to see and it’s really hard to understand it,” she added.

The primary partner for the food distribution is the Central PA Food Bank, Rempe said, which is really how ARW and “all the other food pantries in the county can do this work.”

“We are the largest food pantry in the county. We’re open five days a week, and our sponsors for today, help supplement our budget so that we can make this happen,” she said, adding that the primary sponsors for the distribution are UPMC, EuroOptic and Jersey Shore State Bank.

“No one should have to question the availability of food on Christmas, a day meant to be joyful and spent with loved ones. We are proud to say that we are taking the guesswork out of obtaining their Christmas meal,” according to information from ARW and the Food Bank.