Hard times, helping hands

Business owners, organizations aid residents in trying times

SOUTH PORTLAND — For anyone else, it might have been a simple homework assignment, but for Christina Guimond it was a call to action.

A social work major at the University of Southern Maine, Guimond was reviewing relevant news articles for a class assignment when she read about recent cuts to the state’s home-heating subsidy.

“It just spiked something in my mind,” said Guimond, “and it was while on my way to work one day that I had an idea.”

Guimond, of Lyman, works her way through college by waiting tables at Thatcher’s Restaurant & Sports Pub, on Foden Road in South Portland. Normally, Thatcher’s is closed on Thanksgiving Day, but Guimond wondered if her boss would be willing to both open the doors, and give meals away for free. As a result of Guimond’s charitable idea, Thatcher’s South Portland location will be open noon-2 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, joining other area efforts to feed the hungry this holiday season, all with the help of generous business owners and dedicated volunteers.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the budget cuts that spurred Guimond to action are threatening to burden Mainers with a tough winter.

Created in 1980 and now serving more than 70,000 Mainers, the Low-income Home Energy Assistance Program (LiHEAP) has been slated for a 59 percent slash in funding by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from $55.6 million last year, down to $23 million. The cut is due partly to the fact that Congress has so far failed to pass a budget for the fiscal year that started Oct.1, doing the nation’s business instead by means of a “continuing resolution.”

However, LiHEAP funding for Maine remains in jeopardy, even if the impasse is breached by Congress’ newly minted “Super Committee.” Budget bills now on the table would allocate between $33.9 and $45.7 million to Maine’s LiHEAP program, depending on whether the House or Senate version gains requisite support.

Even a seeming best-case hack of $9.9 million in aid comes at a hard time for Maine’s neediest families, given a concurrent spike in heating oil prices – up 19 percent from the beginning of the year to a statewide average of $3.66 per gallon (as of Nov. 14) and projected to jump another 10 percent before the spring thaw, all according to the Governor’s Office of Energy Independence and Security.

It was a sense of the tough times around her that led Cindy Boolay, who owns the Thatcher’s in South Portland, Westbook and Gorham, to quickly give an OK to Guimond’s plan, lining up donations from some of her vendors, including Sysco Northern New England, US Foods and Coca-Cola.

“I just think it’s a good thing right now to do,” said Boolay. “I think there are a lot of people out there who will be needing this.”

“We’ll have enough to serve between 300 and 500,” said Guimond. “We’re hoping we don’t run out.”

“Everyone is welcome, we’re not limiting [to income] it in any way,” said Guimond, adding that donations made by diners, in any denomination, will be passed on to Preble Street, a Portland-based social service agency that operates a year-round soup kitchen and food pantry.

On this side of the Fore River, another act of culinary altruism is in its 16^th year. On Thanksgiving Day, the South Portland Community Volunteers will once again feed all comers from noon-3 p.m. at VFW Post 832, on Peary Terrace.

“Every year I fear we are going to run out of food,” said event organizer Debbie Hubbard, who helped found the annual tradition out of concern elderly residents of South Portland would not bother to prepare a full holiday meal for themselves.

This year, Hubbard and her helpers will buy 24 turkeys and all the associated side dishes using gift cards provided by NextEra Energy Resources and the South Portland Police Patrolmen’s Association. Evergreen Credit Union pays for the veggies, while many of its employees will bake and donate the 34 homemade pies to be served. Smaha’s Legion Square Market also chips in, donating the cranberry sauce. Meanwhile, the city provides a school bus and volunteer driver to transport shut-ins who might not make it otherwise.

“We can serve up to 300,” said Hubbard, noting, “We started getting reservations three weeks ago – way earlier than usual.”

Elsewhere in the city, Sybil Riemensnider runs the South Portland Food Cupboard out of the basement of St. John the Evangelist Church, on Main Street. 

Riemensnider’s all-volunteer group of about 45 – mostly retirees, many in their 80s – has spent the last 16 years collecting food donations and discounted items from various sources – including Hannaford’s, Smaha’s, the Good Shepherd Food Bank, Native Maine Produce & Specialty Foods and Jordan’s Family Farm – and distributing to the needy every Thursday.

Because it is closed Thanksgiving Day, the food cupboard makes a special effort to send each applicant away with a full turkey-day feast every other day it’s open in November, in addition to the usual week’s work of groceries it makes available for up to four people, per request.

This November, however, distribution is up dramatically, said Riemensnider.

Food Cupboard patrons must meet eligibility criteria, including proof of an income level that is no more than 150 percent of the federally-defined poverty level. That comes to about $1,300 per month for a single person, said Riemensnider. Rules limit beneficiaries to one visit per month. Even so, between 40 and 50 families, on average, are able to take advantage of the service each month.

But on Nov. 3, 73 families qualified for help. On Nov. 10 it was 99, and on Nov. 17, 113.

“Those 296 families included 721 individuals, including 149 children,” Riemensnider said.

“We always have more requests in November, but never in this amount,” she added. “And, while we knew we were going to have a lot this time, we never imagined how much.

“Normally, we’ll take people from anywhere,” said Riemensnider, but this year we had to limit turkey to South Portland people, because we didn’t have enough for everybody.”

According to Riemensnider, many of the November applicants were first-time visitors to a food-pantry of any kind.

“They thanked us over and over again,” she recalled. “This is a bad time for a lot of people. Really, I think what we are seeing here [at the food cupboard] is worse then when the recession first hit.”

By contrast, Mary Rollo, executive director of Scarborough’s Project GRACE, said her group has seen only a small uptick in the number of calls for its holiday meal service.

“It’s a little bit of a moving target, but it looks like the need is about 50 families this year. I’d say that’s about average,” she said, allowing requests, “may be a little bit higher [than last year], but it does fluctuate up and down every year.”

Unlike the South Portland Food Cupboard, Project GRACE has no set eligibility threshold for its holiday service, in which donors “adopt a family,” albeit anonymously, by creating their own Thanksgiving basket or donating cash, which the group uses to build baskets on its own.

“Many donors create a whole Thanksgiving dinner,” said Rollo. “Some I’ve seen come complete with candles and napkins.”

Project GRACE donors who made baskets dropped them off at the nonprofit’s office Tuesday, for pickup by recipients Wednesday. Those giving and receiving aid never meet, said Rollo, partly because Project GRACE is presumed to thrive on anonymity. There’s a fear, Rollo said, that donors might shy away if their names are publicized.

As is, Rollo acknowledges that Project GRACE will end up building about 30 baskets using funds from its own coffers, because it does not have enough donors to adopt every family in need of a Thanksgiving benefactor.

Rollo will not say what makes certain people eligible for aid, although she does say donations are based more on sudden shortfalls in family income than systemic poverty, for which there are other state and federal programs available.

“The recipients show a need through conversation with one of our volunteers, but that’s all very private and confidential,” she explains. “We don’t want to give people an idea that they are not worthy or eligible before they even try.”

Rollo does not expect the drying of LiHEAP dollars will affect either meal of heating assistance programs offered by her group.

“Those who qualify for programs like LiHEAP would not normally come to us,” she explains, “And, if they do, we would first direct them to the town’s general assistance program, or other resources.”

Instead, Project GRACE, since its founding in 2000, tends to focus on short-term needs among folks who would not normally qualify for existing programs, but whose needs are no less acute.

“There are many hands that make this happen, and that’s how we function best with an almost all-volunteer organization,” said Rollo. “There are folks who have been hugely generous. But the important thing is that we try to find donors who want to give in any way, to better foster community participation, neighbor helping neighbor.”

In South Portland, the feeling is the same.

“We are very grateful of our community, who is so supportive of us,” said Riemensnider. “It is because of their generosity that we are able to help any people at all. If we did that support – from the community, the churches, the banks, the city – we would not be able to do anything with the number of people we have in need.”