SEYMOUR – One in three Valley residents are struggling, faced with the daily choice of paying the bills or putting food on the table.
According to a recent community data report compiled by the Valley Council on Health & Human Services, the rate of food insecurity in the Valley has grown from 14 percent to 19 percent over the past three years.
Those numbers will likely only get worse, according to Lillian McKenzie, development and communications manager with TEAM, Inc., the Valley’s community action agency.
Adding to the situation is the threat of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from President Donald Trump’s recent “big beautiful bill.”
McKenzie said more than 40 million U.S. citizens receive SNAP benefits, including nearly 400,000 in Connecticut. She fears the impact of those cuts will hit the Valley soon, resulting in increased reliance on local food banks and pantries.
To deal with the problem in the Valley, TEAM has “Project MANNA” (Mobilizing Action for the Nutritional Needs for All) , which launched in 2020, right before the pandemic hit.
The bi-monthly food drop has TEAM partnered up with eight local food banks and pantries, including two “little pantries,” along with local business partners and sponsors.
Since Project MANNA launched, TEAM said 289,341 pounds of healthy food has provided 241,117 meals for Valley folks in need. Broken down by month, the food drop serves more than 2,300 people who rely on the local food banks and pantries. Of that number, more than 750 children and nearly 450 seniors are served by TEAM’s partner pantries and food banks.
Each month, twice a month, TEAM orders food directly from wholesale distributor, Bozzuto’s, Inc., and gets the food at cost, saving 25 percent off grocery store shelf prices, according to McKenize.
Healthy stuff, from fresh chicken, turkey, eggs and yogurt to jarred sauce, canned tuna and vegetables to fresh fruit, are ordered, loaded onto a Bozzuto’s 18-wheeler tractor trailer truck.
The truck delivers the goods straight to another one of TEAM’s partners – Contractor Nation in the Silvermine Industrial Park in Seymour. The company allows TEAM use of its loading docks.
On Wednesday (July 9) about 25 volunteers from the Haynes Group of Seymour, their families, and other volunteers joined forces at the Contractor Nation loading dock on Cogwheel Lane and waited for Bozzuto’s to arrive.
The truck pulled in around 10 a.m., and the driver unloaded one palette after another, filled with boxes of fresh and canned food, fruits and vegetables and more.
In total, the truck delivered 10,000 pounds of food, or enough to provide more than 8,000 meals, according to David Morgan, CEO of TEAM.
The volunteers on Wednesday, who ranged from young kids to the owner of a local gym in Shelton, quickly unloaded the goods into eight piles for the local food banks and pantries.
Once all the food was evenly divided, van and truck drivers from TEAM’s eight food partners – the Salvation Army (Ansonia), Kathleen Samela Memorial Food Pantry (Ansonia), Blessing Pantry (Seymour), Seymour/Oxford Food Bank (Seymour), St. Vincent dePaul (Derby), Spooner House (Shelton), the Little Free Pantry on Skokorat Street, Seymour and the Neighbor to Neighbor Pantry (Oxford) – pulled up to the loading dock. The volunteers formed an assembly line, loading one box after another into the waiting food banks’ vans and trucks where the food will fill the shelves today.
One volunteer, Laurean Vazquez Limauro, a personal trainer and owner of Leading Level Fitness in Shelton, saw TEAM’s post on social media and was compelled to lend her muscle to the effort.
“I try to contribute as much as I can to the community,” Vazquez Limauro said. “I’ve seen the benefit of a small gesture go a long way. I’m here to unload the truck. There are mouths to feed and food to be distributed.”
Vazquez Limauro recruited her friend, Cindy Flynn, of Orange, to help.
“It’s good to help people out; a little kindness goes a long way,” Flynn said.
Siblings Claire and Chase Haynes, ages 9 and 6, respectively, took time from their summer break from school to help their grandfather, Tom Haynes, president of the Haynes Group, unload and load food.
“It’s important for me to be here because I can help people in need, who need food, so they don’t have to go hungry,” Claire said, as she loaded a bunch of canned beans onto a palette. “They can go to a local food pantry and pick up some food.”
Chase, armed with containers of fresh yogurt, said volunteering makes him happy.
“Some people don’t have food, and doing this for them makes me feel happy and kind,” Chase said.
Claire and Chases’ dad, Patrick Haynes, said he hopes his young kids learn a lesson in caring, with the hope that one day they can grow up in a world free of food insecurity.
Morgan said addressing food insecurity couldn’t happen without a massive team effort. He credited Haynes and Griffin Health as the premiere donors behind Project MANNA’s success, as well as local donors and grant money to help buy the food.
“We can be a difference here,” Morgan said. “People are trying to balance their out-of-control health care costs and prescriptions with putting food on the table. I am not overstating how life- changing and lifesaving this (food drop) is for our very own in the Valley. Despite the horrors that are coming with SNAP reduction, we can dig deep together and address and eliminate food insecurity in the Valley. Then we can hold a mirror up to D.C. or Hartford or anyone else and say ‘Houston, we have a problem here: you can’t take a sledgehammer to these programs.”
Beth Palumbo, lead volunteer with the Seymour/Oxford Food Bank, watched as volunteers piled up the back of her van with box after box of food.
“It’s fabulous, we rely very much on the generosity of others to bring food to the food insecure,” Palumbo said.
Tom Haynes said helping with the effort is a no-brainer.
“We all need to start at our own kitchen table,” Haynes said. “And for me, that’s the Valley. Our commitment is to help solve food insecurity in the Valley, and that’s achievable. We, as business owners, have an obligation to step up and help and take care of our community.”
According to statistics from the U.S. Dairy and Agriculture Department, 18 million people in the U.S., or 13.5 percent, were food insecure at some point in 2023. In Connecticut, in 2023, 10.4 percent of households were food insecure, meaning their access to food was limited by a lack of money or other resources.
For more information, visit Project MANNA online.