Charity needs to be a year-round event
Gilmer Community Food Pantry (GCFP) Director Adam Pilkinton knows what it’s like to celebrate Thanksgiving in poverty.
He grew up in Southwest Atlanta, where his family often visited Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless, the local food pantry.
“I was thankful for any sort of normalcy,” he said. “I wasn’t being left out of what I saw on TV. It was special.”
Every year, the GCFP helps provide a Thanksgiving turkey to local families in need.
The pantry also supplies a ham for Christmas.
“I’m not talking about little, tiny ones,” Pilkinton said.
The pantry isn’t open Thanksgiving week, so it gives out its Thanksgiving food over the rest of November.
“It was about 700 pounds more of food this month than last month,” Pilkinton said.
Last week, the pantry served 448 adults and children 19,000 pounds of food.
Usually, November and December are the pantry’s busiest months, Pilkinton said.
This year, the government shutdown’s impact on food stamps has increased those numbers even more.
“This community is a good community,” Pilkinton said. “They see what’s going on and they help.”
GCFP is unusual among food pantries because it’s completely volunteer operated. This style of management reduces overhead costs, allowing the pantry to give out more food.
This volunteer approach is why the pantry can give out more than a few canned foods and some donated bread.
And at food pantries, the holiday season usually sees a surge in volunteering, Pilkinton said.
“The food got better and the volunteers got more abundant,” he said of Christmas season at the pantry his family visited in childhood. “But, I never understood why it was limited to this time of year.”
Even if holiday volunteering is great, GCFP needs volunteers on days that aren’t as celebrated, Pilkinton said. On Feb. 3 and July 7, people still need food.
“We don’t expect it to be 51 to 52 weeks per year. But somewhere in the 40s is a great help to not always be in a perpetual hunt for so many different things,” Pilkinton said.
Right now, GCFP is looking for a volunteer receptionist to serve Wednesdays 8:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Pilkinton said. Spanish and English experience is preferred.
As Christmas approaches, Pilkinton shared that his reasons for leading GCFP come from the Bible. Scripture calls people to be generous as an act of love and service to God.
“For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to me,” he quoted from Matthew 25:35-36.