Most weeks, Centralia’s Gather Church delivers between 600 to 800 boxes of food to households throughout the greater Lewis County area.
“Food insecurity is a thing in Lewis County,” said co-pastor Patty Howard this week.
With no barriers to entry, the program provides families and single residents with boxes containing 20 meals or snacks.
Triss Stanfield, who coordinates the program, got involved with Gather Church 10 years ago when its food bank was organized in the traditional pantry “shopping” setup. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, rather than continuing to bring people inside the pantry, Stanfield worked to bring the food to them.
The first week, Gather delivered 25 food boxes. From there, the project grew exponentially.
“We gave every family five bags of food,” she said, gesturing as if her arms were full of garbage bags. “We thought it was just going to last a couple weeks. Two and a half years later, here we are.”
If the need subsided after the worst demands of COVID-19, Howard said, the church would have returned to the standard food bank model. Instead, since first reaching 800, the program’s lowest week has been around 500 boxes, said Cole Meckle, Gather’s pastor. He said the fluctuations correlate with times in the last year that inflation more or less severely affected families through grocery or gas prices.
Households can sign up for deliveries weekly, every other week, at random intervals or at an interval of their choice, including every other month.
To maintain the operation’s scale, Stanfield runs a well-oiled machine. While it’s under Gather’s umbrella, it could be an organization all on its own; out of 25 total, about half the workers are volunteers and half are staff.
Three days a week, the team forms a box-filling convenience line, grabbing at least one protein item, fruits, vegetables, snacks and, usually, something fun for the kids, Stanfield said. As they go, one person retrieves boxes (which are donated back to the church on the next delivery), another loads vans and drivers head off to all ends of the county. The program has accrued a two-week stock of dry goods, ensuring participants time for a back-up plan if Gather were to lose its food supplier.
One day per week, the vans deliver throughout the Twin Cities. On another, they head to the remote reaches of the area, including Packwood, Pe Ell, Rochester and Vader. This week, over 250 boxes will go to homes outside the Twin Cities, mostly in East and South Lewis County, Stanfield said.
Based on data from the Napavine delivery route, which has high food box demand, she estimates participants are split half-and-half as families and single residents.
“We got a message from a woman in Bellingham whose mom lives in the Packwood-Randle area and she said her mom is on a very fixed income with limited mobility,” said Howard during a Monday presentation to the Lewis County Board of Health. “She was absolutely overjoyed one day when she opened her box and there was a cabbage. … She had not had fresh produce in so long that she was overjoyed by a cabbage.”
In another recent success story, thanks to a grant from nonprofit Save The Children, food boxes were stocked with funds for holiday meals and children’s books. One family, Stanfield said, was able to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for 12.
“They would not have had Thanksgiving,” Stanfield said, punctuating, “Thanksgiving. If they hadn’t gotten that — the food boxes are just barely getting them through.”
Whether someone asks for enough food for one or ten people, she said, Gather doesn’t check. If they’re lying, Stanfield said it must means “they need food that badly.”
Boxes are filled with informational packets on certain programs and occasional recipes based on the boxes’ ingredients. This week, it’s cabbage soup. The church also doubles up deliveries of clothing and hygiene products for some clients.
Residents can sign up for boxes at https://www.gatherstockbox.com/. For those who are entirely out of food, Gather recommends calling 360-827-0264 and states on its website, “we will do our best to accommodate your need.”
Food boxes are also available for pickup from Gather at 408 W. Main St. in Centralia on Thursdays from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
