.jpg "Volunteers pack crates with food items at Matthew 25, a food pantry owned and operated by Catholic Charities. The food pantry serves 1,300 families per month, but is currently experiencing a shortage in protein items.")
Volunteers pack crates with food items at Matthew 25, a food pantry owned and operated by Catholic Charities. The food pantry serves 1,300 families per month, but is currently experiencing a shortage in protein items.
Catholic Charities
As most households stock up on Thanksgiving food items, one South Florida food pantry is struggling to find enough to feed needy families over the holiday season.
Matthew 25 — one of the largest food pantries in Miami-Dade County — issued an “urgent request” for donations from local corporations or suppliers. The food pantry, which is owned and operated by Catholic Charities and feeds over 1,300 families every month, says they’re seen a sharp decline in meats and other protein sources.
“In the last month or month and a half, we’ve noticed a significant decline in the quantity of protein that we get from a couple of different sources,” said Iani Carvalho, director of development and communications for Catholic Charities.
Carvalho said the food pantry has about one fifth of its normal protein options.
“Our next distribution is coming up on December 6th, and we’re anticipating running into the same problem again … we will have something for everyone, but really not enough to feed a family,” Carvalho said.
Though Catholic Charities funds the operational costs of the food bank, Matthew 25 relies on larger food bank partners — like Feeding South Florida and Farm share — and grocery store donations for its total food supply. The food bank prides itself on being able to provide families with items one might not see in a typical food bank — such as dairy items and beef, poultry and fish.
The shortage, Catholic Charities said, could be related to last month’s government shutdown, though the organization is not sure of the exact cause.
For the folks at Feeding South Florida, a nonprofit that aims to fight hunger in South Florida through food assistance programs, protein items are often in high demand and short supply.
According to president and CEO Paco Vélez, there haven’t been any recent supply chain issues affecting operations, but the organization has been experiencing a recent shortage in beef, which reflects a larger beef shortage in the country due to a combination of climate-related and financial issues in the cattle ranching industry.
The shortage comes at a time that Feeding South Florida is also experiencing a sharp increase in families relying on them for food resulting from the lapse in federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits at the beginning of November during the government shutdown.
“We are seeing an elevated amount of families,” Vélez said. “And even though the government has opened back up, it hasn’t changed the fact that our families did not receive SNAP benefits at the beginning of the month and had to figure out how to put food on the table.”
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At the beginning of October, Feeding South Florida saw an average of 80 families per day. That number almost doubled by the end of October and now the nonprofit gets about 180-200 families per day looking for food. The organization serves about 1.3 million individuals annually.
Feeding South Florida, which partners with over 280 nonprofits in South Florida, was able to level up their turkey supply for the holidays. For Thanksgiving, the nonprofit purchased 50 percent more turkeys — 15,200 to be exact — to distribute across South Florida.
Vélez said the nonprofit was able to use some leftover federal funding to supplement the holiday supply. But, the organization is anticipating significant cuts in funding due to massive program cuts to federal programs set to take place in January.
Lifeline for working class families
On Tuesday, at a distribution event at the food bank, Catholic Charities received an unexpected donation from a local business, First Steps Interventions, which organized an internal food drive to support the food bank. Carvalho said the donation will allow the food bank to serve more families, but that they are still looking for protein items.
“It was nice to see that there is that support in the community. People recognize that what we’re doing here is much needed, and there’s plenty of support for that in the community,” Carvalho said.
The typical clients of Matthew 25 food pantry are working families or people who aren’t able to make ends meet amid rising cost of living in Miami. It’s a population that United Way Miami calls ALICE, or Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, — or people who are employed yet still struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living.
“So even if they do have SNAP, even if they do have employment, they’re finding that it’s just not enough… Many of these families will come to us every month. It is something that they rely on,” she said.
The food bank will accept donations of any size, Carvalho said, but in order to keep up with their average of 84,905 pounds of food items per month, Matthew 25 is more so looking for corporate sponsors to provide larger donations.
“When we’re feeding 1,300 families, we need much larger quantities. So a corporate donor, corporate sponsor of some kind, might be able to send us a truckload, like 12 pallets, or trailer load with 24 pallets, that would go a much longer way and be much larger impact.”
Organizations or individuals interested in donating food or linking Catholic Charities with corporate partners can contact Anaderky Macias at 954-540-8967 or amacias@ccadm.org.
This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and donors in South Florida’s Jewish and Muslim communities, including Kahlid and Diana Mirza and the Mohsin and Fauzi Jaffer Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
Lauren Costantino
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