“If it wasn’t for this place, we’d both be really bad off,” Jeff Swan, of Willimantic, said.
Swan is one of thousands served each week at Willimantic’s Covenant Soup Kitchen.
“This place saves lives, and the word’s getting out there and people are starting to show up. They need more volunteers,” Swan said.
Ray Aramini has volunteered at Covenant Soup Kitchen for over three decades. He said the need this summer is more pronounced than it’s ever been before.
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“Summer’s the forgotten time. You’re out at the beach, you’re on picnics, you're on family reunions. You’re not usually thinking about those having trouble making their ends meet,” Aramini said.
“If we don’t have volunteers, we can’t open the food pantry which means people can’t eat,” Convenant Kitchen Manager Tom DeWolfe said.
Willimantic is just one example of the growing need for food assistance throughout the state.
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“Our numbers have doubled, if not tripled at this point,” Covenant's Tosh Gresko-Clark said.
According to Jason Jakubowski, president and CEO at CT Foodshare, Connecticut has seen a 23% increase in food insecurity over the past year.
“The need is about as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, but obviously the amount of food that has been donated is not where it was at the peak of the pandemic,” Jakubowski said.
He said the return of school could help reduce some of the demand, but that overall, more help is needed.
“We need to find a way to get more food out to more pantries, because I don’t know when we hit the peak,” he said.
