This November, students will have the opportunity to contribute to FISH Food Bank, the largest food bank agency in Pierce County, with the Canned Food Drive that is run by Student Life. The Lakes Area FISH Food Bank, located out of the United Methodist Church at Lakewood, is one of the larger locations and serves the Lakewood area. FISH as a whole provides food for up to 50,000 people monthly and the Lakes location provides for 7,000 to 8,000 people each month. The bank allows clients to come in once a week to receive food, and each person is provided with three meals a day for three days. With nine meals per person, a family of four will often walk out with 50 pounds of food.
The fastest growing clientele demographic is senior citizens as pensions and retirement options fail and jobs are unavailable for people 55 and older. Children make up 40 percent of FISH clients as Washington is ranked 40 out of 50 states in nutrition for children in summer.The mission of FISH is that they will not turn anyone away. People seeking assistance are required to bring identification, their address, and the names and birthdates of people in their household.
According to Marcus Stoll, the Lakes FISH manager, food and funding for food at his location comes from private donors, the local churches, the Emergency Food Network of Lakewood, United Way, Food Lifeline Grocery Rescue Program, Walmart, Haggen, and the Government Commodities program, which is a program that the government buys for emergency food assistance programs. Pierce is one of many entities that run food drives for FISH. “Pierce has always done one for us every year,” said Stoll,”And that’s been fairly successful.”
The food that is sent from grocery stores is often the day-old pastries or produce that is still good but not aesthetically pleasing to the paying customer. Due to better inventory control that allows grocers to purchase only the necessities for their store, FISH gets the items that the stores can no longer sell rather than the store’s surplus items that used to be donated.
FISH has also partnered up with Sound Outreach, a program that helps enroll people in medicare, medicaid, food stamps, housing, and most other social services. They often send people with great need to FISH.
“We serve over 2,000 families a month, 8,000 people,” said Stoll. “That’s a lot of food. It takes a lot of food when you are looking at poundage of food. One can is only three servings and that’s a pound. So, you’re feeding a family of 12, you know one can of food isn’t going to help you much.”Stoll relayed that one of the most disheartening things he saw before he took over running the food bank in 2009 was that many individuals were sent home with too little food.“If you are going to give out food, you got to make sure that you are giving out enough food to feed the family that you are giving the food to. Three servings of green beans for 10 people, what’s the point?” said Stoll.
Tiffany Patterson, a FISH client, needs full meals for her family of 15 members. She has been going to FISH for two years and feels that it has really helped her family make ends meet.Stoll explains that, while many clients come repeatedly, most are one-time comers who needed assistance through varying circumstances. Charles Kinney, a veteran and father, came to FISH for the first time as he was tight for the week and his paycheck had yet to come through.
Although FISH has many supporters, the support must continue to keep its doors open. “We need the community support to maintain a level of quality,” explained Stoll. “Our mission is to provide food to people in need with compassion dignity and respect. When people come in here and they are looking at the ground and dragging their feet because they are embarrassed and ashamed to have to come and ask for help, frankly 90 percent of society is a paycheck away from needing to be in this line to make ends meet.” Stoll said that the biggest time of need is between January to the start or summer. This is the time when the holiday hype has died down and awareness for the still-great need of donation has died down. “The other thing people don’t think about is personal items,” said Stoll.
Food Stamps, designed to offset the monthly grocery bill but not replace it, does not cover the personal items such as deodorant, toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste, or baby items. The personal care items that are so essential to daily life is often the most forgotten in donations.
“We have a section that we do personal stuff in but it is strictly donation. When people donate money to the FISH food bank, it is strictly to buy food not personal items. So personal items, pet food, and special dietary stuff, that’s all strictly donation. [These personal items come] and it goes, but right now it is pretty empty. We are out of toilet paper and people ask for it all the time, and I just don’t have any to give them,” said Stoll.
This year will be the first year that FISH will not be able to provide a meat with holiday meals to families.
“We had written a grant opportunity to the Puyallup tribal indians and it was declined. And that $50,000 that we were hoping for was to buy holiday meat. With the price of poultry going through the roof, with the egg costs going up, I just don’t see that happening. So we’ve been putting up signs for holiday meals since we found out that that was declined. In the past you might have been able to get that chicken or that ham or that turkey breast and it’s not likely going to be here unless I find a few donors who are willing to step up.”
Stoll stated that he always needs volunteers, especially from 3pm to 6pm. He hopes to get more high schools involved as these hours are usually when students get off of school and many students have community service requirements to fulfill.
“It’s still good to help people out,” said Jeromie Franklin, a volunteer at FISH. “It’s good, it’s fun to help people, to see the smiles on their faces.”