IFC is Hard at Work Feeding Hungry Families at Holiday Time

With two shelters, a food pantry and a community kitchen to run, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service has a lot on the plate during the holidays – literally.

The executive director recently told WCHL that wage stagnation is keeping the charitable organization busier than ever. But there are ways you can help.

This year, the IFC provided a little more than 400 Thanksgiving meals to households in Orange County, according to Executive Director John Dorward.

The IFC had originally planned on providing about 350 holiday dinners.

“We thought that maybe we could cut back a little from last year, when we did 400 meals,” said Dorward. “The economy is supposed to be getting better. But, apparently, I was wrong about that.”

The IFC is still shooting for 350 meals at Christmas, but that, too, could change.

“I think a lot of it is just that people are still not seeing their wages going up,” said Dorward. “A lot of this goes back to wages, and what people can earn during the course of an average week, or an average month.

“What we’re seeing is that those salaries are not living wages. So, people are just running short.”
Most of the families served by the food pantry have at least one worker in the home, and sometimes that person is holding down two jobs, according to Dorward. But when someone is making minimum wage, or not much more than that, it can be difficult to get through the month.

Dorward said more than 4,000 households in Orange County are signed up for IFC services.

“The only encouraging thing that I can tell you is that the numbers of people coming in, and the numbers of bags of groceries that are going out are not going up anymore,” said Dorward. “They have kind of stabilized. But they stabilized at about 50-to-60 percent higher tha what it was before the great recession.”

IFC has been providing these services for about a decade, and it’s getting help and supplementation for various sources.

The PORCH organization, whose advisory board includes Mayors Mark Kleinschmidt of Chapel Hill and Lydia Lavelle of Carrboro, provides food for families and pantries in those towns.

Another group, TABLE, provides emergency food to hungry children in the area.

Members of United Church of Chapel Hill help out IFC with everything from food donations, fundraising efforts, and even some cooking.

Recently, the IFC has partnered with Farmer Foodshare to offer fresh local fruits and vegetables, along with the traditional ham, turkey, and fixin’s for the holiday dinner.

Farmer Foodshare originated with the Carrboro Farmers Marker several years ago, and has spread throughout the state. The program gives farmers and shoppers a chance to share or buy a little extra for those in need.

And there’s the annual RSVVP Day, which fell this year on Nov. 11. Participating restaurants contributed 10 percent of their total proceeds toward the IFC’s food pantry and community kitchen.

“It has the possibility of being the best RSVVP day we’ve ever had,” said Dorward. “We ended up with 115 restaurants. Half of the have already sent their money in. And we’ve already collected almost $13,000.”

If the other half does as well, he said, then an all-time record will be achieved.

You can go to ifcweb.org for more information, if you’d like to help.