Food bank director feels efforts 'barely scratching the surface'

link File photo

Inventory and Receiving Clerk Mida Cadena of Clovis cleans, inspects food for the food bank’s backpack program earlier this year.

The easiest part of being the executive director of the Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico is knowing how much the efforts help people.

The hardest part, Dianna Hernandez said, is knowing how much that help was needed.

“I’ve been trying to go out to all of our sites, and I went to Encino and Vaughn,” Hernandez said. “They were so grateful to get fresh apples. Encino is 100 miles from anywhere; they can’t just hop in their car and go to Albertsons.

“You see the need. You just want to help. It’s tough with those small communities.”

Every day at the warehouse building just southeast of the Brady-Norris intersection in Clovis, the food bank moves hundreds of pounds of food, sometimes to the most rural points of eastern New Mexico, and tries to find ways to acquire and deliver more to those in need.

The biggest misconception, board president Allan Isbell said, “is that people just come in and we hand out food. We deliver food, but we do it through our agencies.”

The food bank, from July through October, moved 356,839 pounds of food throughout its six-county distribution area, and is well on its way to moving 1 million pounds of food, just as it did in 2013.

Still, the goal is to move more food, help more people.

“When it comes to people being fed here … I feel like we’re barely scratching the surface,” Hernandez said. “There’s where the food drives, the fundraisers have to be taken to the next level.”

The food bank has four main programs — its mobile food pantry distribution, its school backpack program, Special Helpings meals for homebound residents, and the non-food I Still Care Program.

Food for the first three endeavors comes from three sources — The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP, or more commonly known as commodities), donated food and purchased food if possible and necessary.

Every month is broken down into four different weeks. The first three full weeks of the month are for the food bank’s mobile food pantry distributions. Partial weeks are known as non-delivery weeks, as there are no Mobile Food Pantry deliveries. But every weekday includes at least one pickup from a large donor (Clovis and Portales Walmarts, Mrs. Bairds) and/or deliveries for the Mobile Backpack Program.

Mobile Food Pantry: During those three full weeks, deliveries are made to 23 separate agencies throughout the six counties. For example, the second full-week Tuesday includes deliveries to Grady, San Jon, Logan and Nara Visa, and third full-week Thursday includes deliveries to Fort Sumner, Vaughn and Encino sites.

Some agencies feed a few dozen households, others feed a few hundred, with the total food pantry effort serving 1,633 households.

“United Way took on one of these standup sites,” Hernandez said. “They’re feeding about 300 households in Roosevelt County one Saturday a month.

“That’s something that people don’t think about at these mobile pantry sites, that it’s not food bank staff distributing the food. We take the food, but you think about this pallet of food for 300 people. It doesn’t unload itself, it doesn’t unbox itself. It takes a lot of volunteers, and most of them are retirees.”

On a weekly basis in Portales and Clovis, and a monthly basis for rural areas, the food bank delivers its bags for the backpack program. Each bag, sorted at the warehouse largely through volunteer effort, includes 11 items — two dairy, two fruit, two protein, two cereal and three snacks — to get food through the weekend. Every child specifically identified by an educator discretely receives a bag before leaving school for the week.

The program has nearly doubled in outreach over the last 18 months, and Hernandez said the teachers have noted myriad differences it makes for the students. They’re more attentive, better behaved and are more likely to form a friendly bond with the teacher, because the child knows the teacher is looking out for them.

It’s also one of the food bank’s more expensive programs, at around $983 a week and expected to increase due to fluctuating donations. The program survives largely on donated and purchased food because of stringent requirements to move TEFAP food quickly.

“The real struggle right now is the backpack program,” Hernandez said. “People don’t think to specifically buy single cans of Vienna sausage. With the backpack program, the food has to be so specific. It has to be single serve, ready to eat, shelf stable and somewhat nutritious. We’re not going to load these kids up with junk food.

“That’s been a huge challenge, to sustain that program. When I was here a year ago, the number was at about 450, and now it’s at 769. That food is not donated. We might sometimes get it donated, but we’re not getting the 3,000-plus items we need. We’ve got coin boxes out, and we empty those weekly. We’re scraping together every penny to keep that program going.”

The food bank is shooting for $50,000 in grants, up from around $16,000 during its 2013 audit. The number is possible, Hernandez said, and would do a great deal in defraying backpack program costs.

The I Still Care program has 42 residents signed up for a daily wellness call. If everything’s fine, it’s a friendly phone call. If not, food bank staff refers them to the proper agency for help.

The food bank occasionally does non-food distribution, including a current sock drive, when the need or donation presents itself.

“We had a dentist donate toothbrushes,” Hernandez said. “We got a donation last week for adult diapers. Even though it’s not food and we can’t count it towards poundage, we certainly can find another agency or community who can use it and pass it on through our partners.”

For all of the struggles that Hernandez sees, she also sees her fair share of people willing to give, whether it’s a random person designating their United Way paycheck deduction go to the food bank, or somebody at the warehouse using their spare time to sort through a crate of cracked, foul-smelling eggs and piece together a dozen that are perfectly fine.

“I went to Nara Visa, and the gentleman that’s running that site is well into his 80s,” Hernandez said. “But once a month, he unloads this big shipment of food. It’s one of the smaller sites, but he’s helping out 21 families. He doesn’t get paid for what he does, but he does it.”

Hernandez and Isbell said there are plenty of unsung heroes for the food bank, because a nine-person staff can’t serve six counties without plenty of volunteers.

“We’re all dedicated to inventory, or running a truck, or pulling the food,” Hernandez said. “We’re stretched so thin, and for them to step up makes a really big difference to us.”