At the Buckeye Lake LEADS Center, a line stretches out the door of what looks like an ordinary house, but is actually a food pantry for residents of the lakeside town.
Through the door and immediately to the right is the desk of Kimberlee Raike, the director of both the Buckeye Lake and Pataskala LEADS food pantries.
It was Thursday, Nov. 13, the day after the federal government had officially agreed to end the longest government shutdown in history. Raike greeted customers entering through the doors, while also answering her desk phone, which seemed to be ringing unceasingly.
“It’s going to be a crazy day,” Raike said. “Our numbers have doubled recently, so it’s going to be nuts.”
More Americans have been seeking support from food pantries in recent months, particularly following the 6-week federal government shutdown that ended on Nov. 12. More than 19,000 Licking Countians rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and when the federal shutdown delayed payment of benefits by more than two weeks, many families turned to pantries like the Buckeye Lake LEADS Center for support.
Read more: With SNAP benefits on hold, Licking County food pantries see increase in customers
Volunteers help guide shoppers past floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with bread, meat, canned goods, chips and vegetables. Shoppers push black carts equipped with reusable shopping bags that fill with groceries.
Thanksgiving was exactly two weeks away. Raike wanted her customers in Buckeye Lake and Pataskala to have access to a Thanksgiving feast, fit with all of the classics. She soon realized the community had Thanksgiving covered, with volunteers like Pataskala native Kip Rooks who gave away 400 Thanksgiving dinners on Nov. 22.
Read more: Pataskala native to distribute 400 Thanksgiving meals ahead of holiday
That’s when Raike turned her attention to a new goal. If so many seemed to be focused on Thanksgiving, she wondered, what about other holidays?
“People start coming out of the woodwork asking, ‘What do you want to do for Thanksgiving?’” Raike said. “I just got thinking, nobody ever asked me ‘What do you got for Christmas?’”
Raike is preparing 50 Christmas dinners for customers of her pantries. Twenty-five will go to customers at the Buckeye Lake location, and the other 25 to Pataskala.
Recipients will take home a large box filled with either chicken breasts or ham slices, stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans and more – along with a special holiday treat.
A volunteer assisting Raike with the project contacted McKee Foods Corporation, the parent company of Little Debbie, and told the company about Raike’s Christmas dinners. Now, in each of the 50 dinners, recipients can each expect four boxes of a variety of Christmas edition Little Debbie snacks.
Raike knows who many of the Christmas dinners will go to. After directing both pantries for years, Raike has gotten to know her customers well, and she has a good idea of who needs these dinners the most.
“Only being able to service 25, I didn’t want to do a sign-up,” Raike said. “We will have a couple spots open where we’ll be reaching out to people and asking if they need it.”
When it comes to donating to food pantries and supporting projects like these, Raike urges potential donors to think outside the box. Donations tend to increase during the holiday season, but may taper off after the new year according to Food Pantry Network of Licking County Funds Development Director Alyssa Shepherd.
“People deem it as the giving season, so that’s when people are really thinking about giving back,” Shepherd said. “We don’t even have the capacity to do something like Christmas dinners, so a lot of the pantries will take that upon themselves to do it.”
Shepherd said that the giving season can create extra financial commitments for individuals who may already utilize the food pantry network. And going into the new year, donations slow down as budgets reset. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the food pantry network works with the Granville Rotary Club to host a food drive.
“It has always been the annual reminder that hunger is still here and it doesn’t disappear after the holidays,” Shepherd said.
Raike plans to purchase all of the food for her dinners by Dec. 8, and recipients will pick up their dinners on Dec. 15. The most challenging part of it all is not being able to give more, Raike said.
“Having to put a cap on it, that’s hard.” Raike said. “But I love doing this. Everybody in here
loves doing this. We’re getting a lot of new faces, but a lot of these people have been coming here for years, and you get to know them and their stories, and fall in love with them.”
How you can help: To make a donation to help Licking County residents with food assistance, contact the Food Pantry Network of Licking County.
Maddie Luebkert writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.