Window on the West
by Mary Rupert
School’s out and that means a lot more requests for food assistance at the Reola Grant Center at 6640 State Ave. in Kansas City, Kan.
“Today alone our numbers doubled,” said Janice Witt, who operates the center. “The kids are going to be home now, and I have to try and figure out ways to feed them for the summer.”
She is part of a large and varied effort in Wyandotte County to feed the needy.
A completely separate effort, a large summer feeding program, opened today that serves breakfast and lunch at 40 sites in Wyandotte County, including schools and some non-school sites, this summer. For a list of those sites visit www.kckps.org/index.php/summer-menus. There also are meal sites in Turner. The Bonner Springs schools have summer meals programs at Bonner Springs Elementary and Edwardsville Community Center. Children can eat for free at these sites. For more information on these summer meals programs, call 211.
Witt noted that there are some children who either can’t get transportation to a lunch site or whose parents choose not to have them attend one. Several food pantries operating in Wyandotte County try to provide groceries to families each month.
The grocery expenses in some households just doubled or tripled when kids got out of school, Witt said. The Reola Grant Center operates by appointment in a building at the Victory Dodge dealership on State Avenue and the Victory Ford dealership in Bonner Springs. Besides the auto dealership, supporters include many small businesses and individuals in Wyandotte County, Witt said. Ussery Body Shop is one of the oldest supporters, she added.
“We’re just really, really grateful to our community helping us support this,” she said.
“We’re very fortunate in that Victory and Ussery have given us funds,” she said. Victory, both the Dodge location on State and the Ford location in Bonner Springs, has been very generous, giving funding to increase the amount of food the pantry can buy, she added. The center is getting referrals from other food pantries, from state assistance agencies, and from residents who call to make appointments to 913-948-4040.
The Reola Grant Center recently became an independent organization, and is now not affiliated with Civitan, she added. It is now an independent not-for-profit 501(c ) 3 organization, she added. While the Wyandotte County Civitan Club no longer is in operation, two other Civitan groups here, the Civitan Orchids and the Civitan Heartland Helpers are still in existence under the Civitan umbrella.
“We plan on growing bigger and better,” Witt said about the Reola Grant Center. It was the plan all along for the center to expand and become independent in order to help local people, she said. She said her original mission in bringing Civitan to Wyandotte County was to work on local goals, and local goals are why the Reola Grant Center became independent. With Civitan it was a 501 (c ) 4 organization, she added. The change will allow 100 percent of donations to the group to be tax deductible, she added.
As part of its effort to raise money for the food pantry, the center held a fundraiser, Feeding the Family Bike and Car Show, May 16 at Wyandotte County Lake Park. This event was sponsored by Ussery Body Shop and Dealer F/X, she said. All proceeds went for food for the food pantry.
Ussery is one of the long-time supporters of the food pantry. Others include DeGoler Pharmacy, UPS Store, Little Joe’s Asphalt, Van Fleet Excavating, and Smitty’s Heating and Cooling, she said.
Witt said she would like the Reola Grant Center, named for her mother, to offer a thrift store again one day. One day there will be a family development center where people can transition from unemployed to back to work, assisting with education, clothing and vehicles, she hopes. But the everyday needs for increased food assistance are getting most of her attention now.
She envisions a place where the community says to everyone, “There’s room at our table for you. … Let’s get you on your feet. We’ve taken next steps to get that started.”
She added she wouldn’t be able to do anything at all without all the volunteers and small businesses helping.
The assistance from Victory Dodge and Ford has been great, she said. “If I tell you he is a superhero, I mean it,” Witt said about Eric Gentry, who stepped forward to offer the food pantry space at the auto dealership. And, he and other people who work there have been very generous with donations to keep the food pantry going, according to Witt.
The people who are now seeking assistance are generally working-class folks and senior citizens, not the traditional poor, Witt said. Sometimes they have just recently been out of work.
At Easter, the Reola Grant Center fed more than 650 families, she said. From March 1 to April 6, the center provided an estimated 16,372 meals, she added.
Witt said on the average a family of five that comes to the food pantry may get six cans of corn, green beans and other vegetables, a box of stuffing, sweet potato, peas, 12 cans of soup, 40 pounds of meat and five to seven loaves of bread. At an average of 20 pounds of food per family members, a family of five would receive a minimum of 100 pounds of food. Fresh vegetables that people donate from their gardens is not included in this estimate. The Reola Grant Center accepts donated garden produce.
This amount of food is expected to last the family for an entire month. Witt tries to show people how to stretch the food over several days. For example, she will tell them that making ham and beans will stretch the ham into several meals instead of using it all up in one meal on sandwiches.
Witt said she is currently working with Victory Dodge on bringing a free dental day to Victory Dodge and Victory Ford sometime in June, on a date to be announced later. She added that appointments would be required.
To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].
