Jewish Family Services is in the midst of its annual High Holidays Food Drive, which is typically its largest collection of non-perishable food of the year. But the pandemic may have changed that. So even while JFS is providing more food assistance to clients than ever before, collecting what it needs this year could be difficult.
“The last couple of years we have collected around 5,000 pounds of donated goods during the High Holidays,” reported JFS Food Pantry Director Jo Hickey. “Now that amounts to about two days’ worth of food that we distribute through the pantry. Last month we distributed 50,000 pounds of food and we expect to distribute at least that much in September.”
With two locations, the JFS Food Pantry has served more than 1,000 families in the metro, now averaging 800 a month since the pandemic began, representing a 50 percent increase. JFS anticipates the demand for food and basic necessities will continue growing, and the agency needs the community’s help to keep shelves stocked.
In a typical year, congregations host food drives beginning on Rosh Hashanah and concluding after Sukkot, the harvest festival. But this year most congregations are not meeting in person, so JFS has had to switch course. This week (after The Chronicle went to press) JFS hosted the first of two drive-thru collections for non-perishable food items at the Jewish Community Campus. The second will take place from 3-6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the JFS Brookside East location located at 425 E. 63rd St. in Kansas City, Missouri.
In addition to these dates, donations may be dropped off in collection barrels at the main entrance of the Jewish Community Campus during regular hours. Items may also be dropped off by appointment (call 913-327-8250) at JFS Brookside East. Items most needed include tomato products, low-sodium soup, peanut butter, jelly, honey, canned proteins, pasta, canned fruit and paper products.
A second way to support the pantry is by shopping the Buy One, Give One display at participating area Cosentino’s Price Chopper stores. Purchase a $5 Buy One, Give One grocery bag of food from the in-store display, and thanks to a generous donor, your donation to the pantry is doubled to $10 worth of grocery items. A list of participating Cosentino’s stores can be found on the JFS website at jfskc.org/pricechopper. The list includes local stores on 95th Street in Leawood, 119th Street in Overland Park, and 103rd Street in Kansas City, Missouri.
“We should be getting our first shipment of foods from Cosentino’s Price Chopper this week. We are very excited about this program and we thank all families that have already participated,” Hickey said. Hickey believes the bag donation program through Cosentino’s Price Chopper will continue indefinitely.
Increased need
The Food Pantry is not the only JFS service where needs have increased during the pandemic. It has seen, however, the largest increase of all the agency’s programs according to JFS’ Executive Director and CEO Don Goldman. He made the comment at JFS’ annual Friends of the Family event held virtually earlier this month.
“There was a huge spike at the end of March and April as people lost their jobs really quickly and no federal aid or unemployment existed,” Goldman said. “We’ve seen large spikes as federal aid and unemployment assistance have ended and now people have not just lost their jobs in what they thought might be a month or two, many of them have lost them permanently.”
Like most nonprofits, Hickey said the Food Pantry and all of JFS’ programs are trying to be as flexible as they can to continue to provide the high level of service the community has grown to expect from JFS. To serve its clients better, Goldman added that the agency had to “pivot over a weekend.”
“When it was clear that we couldn’t just do most of our services distantly we had to do them remotely,” Goldman explained. “Obviously the Food Pantry is one that you have to have physical connection and so we had to completely change that and make that drive-up service, and we’ve been changing that over time.
“But every other service, whether it’s mental health counseling, older adult services, even chaplaincy continues today,” he added.
Because the Food Pantry’s clients need more than what JFS usually collects in non-perishable food donations, Hickey said JFS turns to Harvesters — The Community Food Network to help fill the gap.
“Some of the items we receive from Harvesters are free, but since we are committed to providing our clients with a variety of food, we need to pay for a majority of that food we get from Harvesters,” Hickey explained. Only pantries that are Harvesters affiliates can purchase from Harvesters.
Kesher KC is JFS’ program that connects people with services and resources for a more secure future. Centered on the Food Pantry, on-site social workers assist people challenged with food, housing, employment and financial insecurity. Goldman explained the people JFS helped through Kesher KC before the pandemic need even more services now “because their life is even harder.”
“But we are seeing people who we have never seen before who never thought that they would lose their job,” Goldman said. “We have people who can’t pay their rent and can’t imagine that they can’t pay their rent or they’re behind with their utilities.”
One Kesher KC client is Charryse Berry. She came to the agency after she lost her job and has been connected with Food Pantry and counseling services. Appreciating the way the staff and volunteers treat her with dignity, she calls herself a “friend of JFS.”
“I feel as though they are my friends, I’m not just a client or a number here. I really have relationships with people here at Jewish Family Services,” she said at the virtual Friends event. “I was in a very depressed place. I received great counseling here.”
When she came to JFS, Berry was close to being evicted from her home and thought she might have to live in a shelter.
“I am grateful for all the services,” Berry said. “It’s like one-stop shopping. All of the information they are able to provide lets you come here and walk away completely filled up with good information.”
Another grateful Kesher KC client is Ariel Lloyd, who works at The New Theatre & Restaurant. She’s been unemployed since the pandemic began and is unsure when the dinner theater will reopen. She has received pantry services, new glasses, rent assistance and counseling. Lloyd, who is Jewish, doesn’t know what would have happened to her and her family had it not been for JFS.
“There are people there who are helping us during this unprecedented time. It’s priceless,” Lloyd said.
JFS is counting on the continued generosity of the community to help serve the needs of its clients in the Food Pantry, Kesher KC and all its other programs.
“We have an incredibly generous community. We started fundraising a week into this pandemic because we saw the need, we weren’t sure how large it would be and the community has come through,” Goldman said. “At the end of March we thought we were planning for three or four months and we thought we had some foresight. Now we realize we’re planning not just for the six months but for the year and beyond because this is a much bigger deal than even we thought that it was at the end of March.”
For information about the current High Holiday Food Drive, or how to host a food drive, contact Hickey at or call 913-327-8257.