Pleasant Valley Ecumenical Network’s food distribution and summer lunch program will remain outside for the foreseeable future.

“The plan is to stay drive-thru as long as there are CDC group size limitations and the weather allows us to be outside,” said PVEN President Tom Campbell.

They will monitor case numbers in the county.

Smooth transition

“We have relied on the same core of 12 phenomenal volunteers for the past four months. Several older volunteers remained at home,” said operations manager Colleen Walsh, who will celebrate a two-year anniversary with PVEN in September.

“I started as a volunteer and could not stop coming. I loved helping people,” said Walsh, who went from volunteer to an intern, then grant helper and now a full-time employee.

They have a Team A of volunteers to do distribution and a Team B, led by Campbell, as a backup.

This team “is there to step in if someone from Team A gets sick and they need to take over the distribution process,” Walsh said.

Team B has not needed to step in yet.

Distribution is held every Tuesday from 9 to 11 a.m., except if there is a fifth Tuesday of the month. Distribution also occurs on the second Saturday of the month from 9 to 11 a.m.

“We take care of 15 families in each 20-minute appointment slot,” said Walsh.

PVEN uses an appointment system for its clients. Clients are preregistered and get a time slot.

Once a month, they can get food from PVEN, located along Route 209 in Sciota.

Five volunteers load the cars while other volunteers continue to fill carts with supplies inside the building and transport them outside.

Volunteers practice Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety measures, including masks and social distancing.

Clients receive pre-bagged items including produce, meats, pasta, cereal, shelf-stable items, bread and eggs. How much they receive is dependent on the size of their family. Families with infants receive baby food, diapers, wipes and formula.

“We have learned that clients prefer to pick out their own stuff. Some of them are donating items they do not want back to PVEN,” said Walsh.

Increased demand

Job losses, short-term layoffs and other uncertainties surrounding the pandemic created an uptick in families needing assistance.

“We set a record in April. We usually see less than 300 families each month,” said Walsh. “We had 330 families, which was more than 1,000 individuals.”

In May, the number decreased slightly, and they served 290 families.

In June, it returned to a more normal summer volume of 244 families served.

Walsh attributes this return to average demand by a temporary increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits a family receives from the government.

“As the benefit amount decreases, we will see the number of families increase,” she said.

Summer meals program

When Pleasant Valley School District closed its buildings in mid-March due to the pandemic, the district offered Grab N Go meals to the families with children in the West End. Families picked up two days’ worth of breakfast and lunch for each kid three days a week.

“When the school year officially ended, we did a smooth hand-off and transitioned the program into PVEN’s Summer Meals program,” said Campbell. “We moved the distribution point over to the Western Pocono Community Library.”

Volunteers hand out bags filled with fresh sandwiches and fruits, cereal, graham crackers, milk and shelf-stable items such as cans of spaghetti and meatballs.

“Each kid receives four meals every time they come,” said Brigid Tray, summer lunch program coordinator.

This is her internship for a master’s in public health program at East Stroudsburg University.

“There has been a change in the rules for this year that allows us to expand the program to support this easy Grab N Go model,” Campbell said.

If a family comes on Monday, they get meals for that day and Tuesday. They can return Wednesday and Friday, Tray said.

“I like meeting everyone - the volunteers and the clients. It is such a positive experience. I leave feeling better about the world,” she said. “We have an awesome crew of volunteers.”

The summer meals program is open to all kids from toddlers to high school, and to disabled children in any publicly funded education program through age 21.

“They do not have to be PVSD students - we provide meals to children from any school district,” Tray said.

Distribution also occurs Thursdays at Sun Valley firehouse from 11 to 11:30 a.m., Walsh said.

The program will continue through the summer until school resumes.

Canceled fair

The canceled West End Fair does not mean a loss of income for PVEN. Instead, it will mean two other kinds of losses.

“PVEN’s booth at the fair has always been about nutrition and poverty education and getting people to realize that the pantries are here for people regardless of why they need help,” Campbell said. “So, it is a lost opportunity to educate people about what options they have if they are financially stretched thin.”

Last year on certain promotion days, fair patrons brought donations of nonperishable items for incentives such as reduced admission and ride costs. The donated food was split between PVEN and other local pantries.

“I understand why they canceled, but it is disappointing because we get a lot of donated food from families of kids who want reduced ride prices,” Walsh said. “We will wait and do it again next year.”