The winter months can often exacerbate food insecurity.
Some households that already struggle to make ends meet may have more friends and family over, and unhoused residents often shelter in place during storms, making it harder to get food.
The South Chico Community Assistance Center holds a food pantry every other week, and co-founder Rich Ober said it's seen an increase since the beginning of the year.
“We were probably averaging between 60 and 80 households coming through the door …” Ober said. “We're averaging 110 to 120 households coming through, so 300 to 400 people. And so that's a huge increase.”
The pantry's biggest day of the year fed 220 households. Ober said that level of demand wouldn't be sustainable unless the group doubled its yearly budget, which is currently around $35,000.
A report this year from the Butte County Department of Public Health showed that food insecurity was a top health challenge facing residents in the area. It also found that the county's rate of food insecurity was 12.6%, which is about two percentage points higher than the state average.
Collaborating with others
Ober spoke with NSPR from inside the organization's food pantry, surrounded by soup and fruit cups and jars of peanut butter. It's located in the organization's building – an unassuming house on Park Avenue.
Sounds of clattering from cooking drifted out of the house's kitchen. The assistance center was partnering with Safe Space, another local nonprofit that provides emergency overnight shelter for unhoused residents. A few days leading up to Christmas, Safe Space didn't have a location to use as a shelter. So they partnered with the assistance center to use their kitchen to make meals to distribute to unhoused residents downtown.
"It's the cliche of taking a village," Ober said. "It takes a network of entities, individuals who understand each other, who have grown to trust each other and see the ways that we can dovetail our services."
Items in high demand
Ober said the assistance center is completely volunteer driven, and always looking for more volunteers and donations.
He said there’s always a need for sources of protein – things like canned chicken and tuna, and jars of peanut butter.
"The thing that we need the most, because [...] we rarely run out of nonperishable food, is the food that we need to go out and purchase," Ober said. "The way we describe it to people is we [need] cold and frozen foods. Eggs and butter and cheese – we always run out of those. We'd love to find a source so that we didn't necessarily need to buy that ourselves."
The pantry also offers clothing, and Ober said that items like blankets, jackets, shoes and sleeping bags are in high demand and aren't donated as often.
The center does have one thing it doesn't need donated.
"We had a really generous donation from the Pacific Supply Company in Oroville of fruit cups. We actually got two pallets, so hundreds and hundreds of packages of fruit cups," Ober said with a smile. "We don't need any more of those right now."
