 |
| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet It took a dedicated bunch working in tandem to pull off a delicious spaghetti supper on April 6 to benefit the Caribou Ecumenical Food Pantry. Helping to staff the kitchen were, from front, volunteers Chris Gura, Ray Cyr and Donna Small. |
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — About 90 satisfied diners left the annual Spaghetti Supper at Faith Lutheran and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church with happy stomachs, but excellent cuisine wasn’t the only thing being served up that evening.
The supper raised about $1,300 to help support the Caribou Ecumenical Food Pantry, and additional funds are on the way from faith-based non-profit Thrivent Financials for Lutherans in support of the 28 volunteers who donated their time to cook, serve, and clean up after the meal.
With so many positives — including drawing the largest crowd to the annual dinner — organizer of the annual dinner Barb Aiken considered the supper a complete success.
It takes a lot of hard work and community support (and the secret pasta sauce recipe of Barb’s husband, Caribou Mayor Gary Aiken) for the supper to go off without a hitch, but “we wanted to help the people of the community and the food pantry,” Barb said.
Preparation for the event started in January, when volunteers began asking local businesses for donations. Because the supper received generous donations, the funds generated through the supper can be used to help the pantry instead of deferring fund-raising expenses.
Manager of the Pantry Jessica Feeley expressed her appreciation for the hard work that went into the spaghetti supper.
Faith Lutheran and St. Luke’s Episcopal are two of eight area churches that comprise the Caribou Ecumenical Food Pantry Board of Directors — the other six are the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Gray Memorial United Methodist, Unitarian Universalist Church, Lidstone United Methodist, Caribou Assembly of God and Caribou Church of the Nazarene. Each church provides volunteers for the pantry on a rotating schedule; for instance, this month’s food pantry volunteers are from Lidstone United Methodist.
Feeley explained that each church also provides a $30 stipend per month, “but that doesn’t come close to covering everything.”
Instead, various fundraisers like the annual Spaghetti Supper help to offset costs, along with programs like the Feinstein Foundation.
“A gentleman named Alan Shawn Feinstein gives away $1 million of his own money every year to soup kitchens and food pantries,” Feeley said, explaining that every dollar or pound of food collected by the pantry between March 1 until Tuesday, April 30 is tallied up and those numbers are sent to the Feinstein Foundation. With the foundation’s minimum award of $250 per food pantry, Feeley said that last year the Ecumenical Food Pantry received roughly $260.
“[During that two-month time], we also get a lot of local donations and that helps because we didn’t plan on blowing a freezer,” Feeley said. In January, one of the pantry’s refrigeration units broke and it took over $300 to replace.
The pantry is run by volunteers — but the expenses aren’t voluntary.
Feeley explained that their food primarily comes from Catholic Charities, supplemented by meat, pastries, and culled vegetables from Caribou Shop’N Save.
“The Caribou Shop ‘N Save is really good to us,” she added.
The pantry also purchases some of their food from the Good Shepard Food Bank, and the rest of the needs are met by the churches’ congregations.
“I submit a report once a month at our pantry board meetings and inform them as to what the pantry specifically needs; they put that information in their church’s bulletin and the representatives bring whatever has been donated to the next meeting,” Feeley said.
The Ecumenical Food Pantry serves six towns — Caribou, Connor, Perham, Wade, Washburn and Woodland.
“We very rarely have to turn people away,” Feeley said, emphasizing that those seeking assistance must meet certain requirements: primarially, they must be from one of the serviced towns and they must meet the income guideline for 150 percent of the poverty level.
Once a family makes an appointment to receive assistance, the volunteers go to work preparing boxes of food — filled with enough products to feed a family of four or five for about five or six days and can try to accommodate specific food allergies or dietary requirements.
While the pantry is there to help and volunteers are more than willing to assist, Feeley emphasized that the pantry doesn’t serve as a substitute for the grocery store.
“Our purpose is to try to get people through a food emergency,” she explained.
Individuals can seek assistance up to four times a year but must wait six weeks between appointments.
The Caribou Ecumenical Food Pantry is open twice a week between September 1 through Thursday, May 30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays; during the summer, the pantry is open on Thursdays.
Individuals seeking assistance must call between the hours of 10-11 a.m. on open days to schedule an appointment.
Additional information about the Caribou Ecumenical Food Pantry can be obtained by visiting their Facebook page.
