This year, Haiti is in Paterson.

This year, Haiti is in Paterson. Those were the words used by Rosa Williams, our Conference Lay Leader in an address to her local church, Galilee United Methodist Church in Englewood, NJ, as she described the plight of CUMAC-ECHO following the recent winter storms. We all understood. While it is our Christian mission to address the needs of emergencies abroad, we must also find a way to respond to the needs of our neighbors.

Galilee United Methodist Church has a history of responding to local needs. In short order, Rosa arranged for a crew from her local church to work for one morning at CUMAC-ECHO in Paterson, NJ. Our mission for the day was to do whatever was needed. A group of eleven volunteers, including our pastor, Rev. Sherrie Dobbs Johnson reported for duty on Monday December 5, 2011. We thought we might be put to work folding donated clothing but after a tour of the facility we were escorted to the basement, where canned goods and other food staples were waiting to be bagged for distribution.

We got careful instructions: One each of rice, boxed stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, soup, canned vegetables, kidney beans (a meat substitute) and three boxes of prepared noodle meals went into a double plastic bag. Individual pop tarts, peanut butter and juice went into the doubled bags for snacks.

These limitations allowed the more than 500 recipients who come to CUMAC-ECHO each month to have some elements of basic nutrition. We learned that the basics of these packages will vary depending on which companies can donate.

We learned that many food products previously donated to this and other food pantries are now sold to Dollar Stores yielding a better return for some manufacturers. We learned that CUMAC-ECHO and similar pantries try to control distributions by limiting recipients to one food package each month. We saw that the foods we bagged were, at best, the bare minimum for an individual and could not sustain the average person for one month.

New Jersey is the home to many of the wealthiest people in the U.S. It is also the home of some of the poorest people in the U.S. These realities were clear when Hugh Dunlop created a food pantry for needy students in the late 1970s and remain as facts of life today. That food pantry has evolved over the years into CUMAC-ECHO, [Center of United Methodist Aid to the Community Ecumenically Concerned Helping Others]

Galilee United Methodist Church, NJ will continue its mission of service and support to CUMAC-ECHO and we urge you to join us in this effort.

Written by
Zandra Strother
Lay Delegate, Galilee UMC, Englewood, NJ