In Granby, hundreds of people depend on the Hope 4 Life Food Pantry to feed their families. That pantry, though, is in danger of shutting down unless money can be raised to repair and aging fire alert system.
Pastor Al Royal oversees the pantry. He said they need to fundraise about $15,000 and have set up a GoFundMe account. Royal said he has drawn from his own bank account before to keep the pantry open, but he said he’s not in a position to do that anymore.
Royal estimates that the fire system is at least 45 years old. It’s located inside part of the Life Church of New England and is constantly being fixed.
“We’ve had a lot of switches repaired. The backup batteries repaired, and it’s got to the point where we can’t patch it anymore,” Royal said.
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That system mainly covers the Hope 4 Life Food Pantry - a resource that the pastor said could end up closing unless the fire system is updated by month’s end.
“It would definitely hurt well over 200 families every week,” he said.
Joel Poskus is one of the pantry’s volunteers. It’s a personal calling for him after once receiving food there himself, during the pandemic.
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“I was out of work and the whole world was in that scary place,” Poskus said.
According to the church, just over 2,500 people were served at the pantry last year. More than 260,000 pounds of food were distributed. Poskus said closing it would be impactful.
“I know from personal experience how great the need in the community is, and I see the large number of people that are being served on a weekly basis here,” Poskus said.
Royal explains he is seeking donations and needs to raise about $15,000 to make the repairs and avoid shutting down the pantry.
“To let that many families go hungry because we couldn’t come up with 15 grand, it would be devastating,” he said.
To avoid closing, Royal said they need to have the money in a couple weeks, so that they can order all the equipment and have repairs done by the end of the month.
NBC Connecticut reached out to the fire marshal for more information on the situation, but he was unavailable.
