After providing thousands of meals for hungry Schoharie County families, The Joshua Project’s Backpack Program is winding down.
Thousands of meals is an understatement. How about more than a half-million meals?
Joshua President Pat Costello reviewed those numbers and more at the organization’s monthly meeting in Middleburgh last Tuesday.
Although The Joshua Project’s Backpack Program drew attention during the pandemic, Joshua volunteers continued other programs, too, and Mr. Costello updated those. (See related story.)
The Backpack Program started in March, after COVID closed local schools and left many kids without the meals they received in school.
Early backpacks included canned food, apples, eggs and more, enough to feed kids in one family for a week.
But as joblessness and economic hardship increased, backpacks grew.
“Our intent was to feed children who were no longer getting school food,” Mr. Costello said.
“But we went from feeding children to whole families.”
Larger backpacks, put together every week, included six pounds of pork, a whole chicken, chicken filets, a 20-pound dairy box of milk, cheese and yogurt and a 20-pound produce box of vegetables and fruit “to each and every family,” Mr. Costello said.
Volunteers would deliver food from the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York every Wednesday, first to Our Lady of the Valley Church in Middleburgh, later to the Cobleskill Fairgrounds, and for a few weeks, to the Harva site in Howes Cave.
Whatever the location, volunteers would divide the food according to the family numbers given by local school districts, and drivers would pick up the boxes for each district.
“We had nothing but praise from school districts,” Mr. Costello said. “I talked to many school districts, and they felt families were better fed than normally.”
The program provided three meals a day for a family of four. Totaled up, the numbers are staggering:
•1,200 people fed per week for the last six months.
•25,200 meals per week.
•655,000 meals over six months.
•25,000 pounds of food per week received free or bought by The Joshua Project.
“We had growing pains,” Mr. Costello said, noting that several trailers broke down carrying food from the Regional Food Bank in Latham.
“But after a while, it was a machine.”
The Joshua Project has had a Summer Backpack Program, run by Rick and Karen Conner, for years, and “fortunately we had a model to fall back on,” Mr. Costello said, for the COVID program.
For buying the food, grants from The United Way helped, as did an $11,000 grant The Joshua Project received from Arby’s in December.
But many, many donations, from $5 to several thousand came from local businesses and individuals, Mr. Costello said.
The key, he added, were the selfless helpers who turned out every week to sort and divide the pallets of food.
“We had a wonderful group of volunteers to help us get this done,” Mr. Costello said. “Somebody’s been watching over us.”
The faith-based Joshua Project continues to depend on donations for food programs and other help for the needy. To donate, send a check to The Joshua Project, PO Box 413, Middleburgh, NY, 12122.