There is a big new nonperishable-food collection basket in the Great Hall. To understand the importance of keeping this basket full, see if you know the answer to this question:
“Who is poor enough to qualify for food assistance in Newark, Delaware?”
St. Thomas’s “Blue Hen Bounty” food pantry, with its focus on college students, says simply that if you need food, you can come here when the pantry is open and take what you need. Likewise, Newark’s churches invite hungry people to receive, without demonstrating a government-certified need, a weekday hot meal at Hope Dining Room. People without housing can receive food from the Newark Empowerment Center.
However, most Newark families and individuals who live in poverty depend for food on SNAP (“Food Stamps”), a monthly credit used to purchase groceries. Each person’s eligibility is established by officials at the Hudson State Service Center who review the applicants’ income tax returns to see how much they are earning in proportion to their family size. If their qualify for Food Stamps, they qualify also for Food Bank pantries that are open for one day toward the end of each month, when most people’s Food Stamp money has run out. Poor people must prove their eligibility annually to continue receiving food assistance.
Now, what happens when an emergency—illness, injury, a layoff—occurs to a family provider who already depends on Food Stamps? This is when the Newark Area Welfare Committee comes in. The Hudson Center will refer you to the NAWC. To receive help from the NAWC, you must prove, through the Hudson Center, that, with an interruption to your income, you are the poorest of the City of Newark’s poor.
St. Thomas’s, along the rest of Newark’s churches, has contributed food to the NAWC for many decades—probably since 1920. Parishioners have brought nonperishables to church on Sundays and placed them in a wicker basket located in the narthex on the way into the nave of the church. Volunteers from the parish then take the weekly donation over to the NAWC food pantry, which is housed at the Methodist Church on Main Street.
In the past year, there have been almost no contributions to the old wicker basket in the narthex, which is hard to see in its old location. So, it has been replaced with a big white basket in the Great Hall. Our parish volunteers, Jack and Marge O’Donnell, are ready to deliver your donations to the NAWC each week. If you are able, please bring to the new basket extra food items you pick up when shopping for your own groceries.
“Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these . . . you have done it to me.”
St. Thomas’s Annual Bazaar 2023 will be held on