Profile: The Catholic Harvest Food Pantry

As is written in Isaiah 58:10: “Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.” Since the beginning of time, the hungry and needy are always with mankind, and caring for them is a way to serve Christ.

To survive and to thrive, all people need food to sustain them. Sadly, according to statistics, 2023 data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, almost 28 million adults often did not have enough to eat. Other statistics noted that in 2022, 49 million Americans reached out for food assistance from food banks and food pantries. Recent statistics note that about 50,000 to 60,000 food pantries in the United States serve more than 46 million people annually.

In York County, Pennsylvania, those in need are blessed by the services of the Catholic Harvest Food Pantry. As their website notes,

Catholic Harvest Food Pantry is a non-profit organization overseen by a Board of Directors. We are an independent organization generously supported by four key Catholic Churches in York including the Immaculate Conception (St. Mary’s), St. Rose of Lima, St. Patrick’s, and St. Joseph’s York as well as other Catholic and non-Catholic Churches and places of worship, local businesses, service organizations, and individuals in York County.

According to Shari Gordon, the pantry’s executive director, a religious brother and parishioners at nearby Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in York, PA recognized the need for a food pantry. “So I can only assume at that point the parishioners and the church community saw that there were people who needed food help.” That community launched the pantry in 1985.

As she noted, the pantry has many food sources, such as the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, which provides 27 counties in south-central Pennsylvania.

We get about $75,000 worth of food each year from Central PA Food Bank, and thousands of pounds from retailers like grocery stores at least 3 days a week, local farmers, and trucking companies. There is even a local Arm & Hammer plant that provides so all pantries can have small bottles of detergent to offer our clients, neighbors as called.  We also get donations including from churches and non-Catholic churches in the area. For example, I go to Saint Rose of Lima and drove a pantry van back with 1,000 pounds of food, such as pasta, tuna, Mac n Cheese plus toothpaste, all highly needed items….At Catholic Harvest, each household can schedule to receive a monthly food distribution every 30 days.

As Shari Gordon notes,

The pantry serves about 950 households each month and the families can get frozen meat, dairy products, and non-perishables. We provide a grocery list, email or text or call the person and go through a list of food items which is updated for the food distribution that we have each weekday. It includes the latest of what we have in stock. We are serving 30 households at each distribution, so we make sure we have 30 items of each item available.

As she noted,

Volunteers unload trucks and stock items.  Another team of volunteers pack the food orders based on what each household or family requests. An order can add up to about 100 lbs. of food and other items per household. Another team of volunteers distribute the orders, and there are different teams of volunteers for each distribution throughout the month.  Most are once a month, some volunteers volunteer every week, and other volunteers volunteer several times a week to help our community.

The food pantry also has a mobile that takes food distributions to those who live in parts of the county without a food pantry nearby.‘The mobile pantry travels somewhere every week, to Lower Windsor and Hellam in the southern and eastern corners of York County and two lower-income housing locations in York,” she said.

The photo below is a meal made from the following items:

Soup or stew made from CHFP ingredients selected as part of a monthly food distribution.

White Rice
Onions
Chicken
Potato
Tomato