by Ellin Walsh
Reporter
Cuyahoga Falls -- Good Neighbors Inc. of Cuyahoga Falls is experiencing a critical shortage of supplies as donations drop dramatically and as demand for free and discounted food continues to soar.
"We just are desperate," says Sandy Johnson, co-chairperson of the Cuyahoga Falls' Good Neighbors unit. She said the agency, which usually fills between 200 and 250 food orders per month, met almost half that many in one week last month.
"I've never seen it this bad," Johnson says, shaking her head. It's more important than ever that the community help to fill the cupboards, said Johnson, who has volunteered at Good Neighbors since December 2002.
On a recent Tuesday morning, there was a constant flow of clients waiting their turn to get groceries. Good Neighbors serves clients from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays at its temporary home inside the former Sill Middle School, 1910 Searl St.
Good Neighbors provides emergency food, clothing and household items to those in need in Cuyahoga Falls, Munroe Falls, Stow, Hudson, and Peninsula. Clients are referred to Good Neighbors from other agencies; they may come for food assistance up to six times a year, as long as there are 30 days between their visits.
Economic factors have conspired to force many more people to seek such assistance.
According to Johnson, a Good Neighbors volunteer recently recognized a new client as a former Ponderosa employee. "They [Ponderosa] closed and within a few weeks, here she was, a single mother of three, needing our help."
Kim Gaug, Good Neighbors' co-chair, says she has asked the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank to increase Good Neighbors' allotment. The foodbank has provided 64,972 pounds of food to Good Neighbors since Jan. 1, according to Mark Mitchell, the foodbank's manager of marketing and communications.
"We're really concerned about the increased demand [for the foodbank's services in the first half of this year]," Mitchell said. The foodbank distributed 12 million pounds of food to more than 350 agencies last year; in 2008, the foodbank is on pace to distribute 14 million pounds of food, Mitchell reported.
With inventory being depleted almost as quickly as it's stocked, Gaug said, "We had nothing [on the shelves] when we left here Thursday.
"What are we going to do when winter arrives," Gaug laments, "and people get socked with huge heating bills? The need gets greater and greater."
According to 17-year volunteer Don Smith, "Food is going out the door as fast as we can pack it up."
A woman who was at Good Neighbors picking up groceries said she has donated to Good Neighbors for about 25 years, both as a Munroe Falls and a Cuyahoga Falls resident. She first became acquainted with the agency as a client about five years ago, the woman recalled, but then she was able to get by on her own again, until recently. A resident of Sutliff II government housing, the woman, a diabetic, said, "I'm on total disability. Bills and prescriptions have me so overwhelmed I can't make it 'til the end of the month."
The woman said she has gone without her cholesterol and asthma pills for two weeks, figuring those were the best of the nine or 10 daily medications she takes to go without, in an attempt to stretch her money.
"And lately," the woman said, "I've been putting groceries on credit cards. It's a bad thing to get into, I know. When you give, you don't figure you're ever going to be the one who needs the help. But I hope to be in the position again when I can give back. That's my goal."
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