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As more families sink into poverty, a Valley group comes to the rescue
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
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Geri Sterbian, left, and Cheri Douglas, volunteers for Neighborhood Ministries and twin sisters, double up to make sure each Thanksgiving box gets an equal amount of food. Volunteers packed the boxes Monday at the agency’s Campbell offices for 75 families who need supplies for the holiday.
The Vindicator ( Youngstown)
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Former Neighborhood Ministries director David Stone and volunteer Walter Fowler, inside the van, have been boxing and delivering food for more than 30 years at Neighborhood Ministries. They were getting ready Monday to deliver food from the Campbell location to two other agency locations in Youngstown.
By Jeanne Starmack
Campbell
Not everyone gets to fill their table so full of food on Thanksgiving that it leads to loosening their belt notches.
For people on the wrong side of the poverty line, just finding enough food to fill their stomachs is a challenge.
The country’s bad economy has pushed many more people over the line. Belt-tightening, not loosening, is their new norm this year.
“You never know when you’re going to be in that position, and you hope someone would help you,” said Neighborhood Ministries volunteer Geri Sterbian, a Boardman resident who was helping to fill boxes with food at the agency’s Campbell offices Monday.
There was one box for each of 75 families that agency staff and volunteers had identified as most at risk of going without food this year. It was a targeted giveaway, explained Mark Samuel, the agency’s director, though among other services, there is a monthly food giveaway and an emergency food giveaway — every day. The agency also offers donated clothes, furniture and household items, and community outreach such as its after-school program.
Neighborhood Ministries never runs out of things to do, Samuel said wryly.
“We feed a lot of people,” he said.
The boxes, packed with speedy efficiency by 12 volunteers who’d started at 10 a.m., were ready to go in less than a half-hour.
Filled with staples that included potatoes, pasta, boxes of stuffing mix, canned goods, bread, cheese and sugar, they lined the floor in one of the rooms. They were going out not only to Campbell residents, but to Youngstown residents served by the agency’s other two locations — at Rockford Village on the East Side and on Matta Road on the West Side.
The agency also is giving out 50 turkeys this year from Giant Eagle, made possible by the United Way, said Samuel. The rest of the food was donated by 14 churches from Campbell, Youngstown, Salem, Hubbard and Alliance, said the agency’s office manager, Donna Thorpe.
Samuel said the volunteers are dedicated.
One of them, Bridget Cramer, quit a paying job 18 months ago to become lead coordinator for the West Side location. She believes God wanted her there.
Cheri Douglas, a Youngstown resident and Sterbian’s twin sister, said she just wants to help the community. “Wherever they need me I’m there,” she said.