For more than 20 years, the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in downtown Ithaca has been running a food drive for local people in need every Tuesday. Each week, volunteers work to collect food from local businesses such as Ithaca Bakery, and DiBella’s as well as grocery items donated by the Southern Tier Food Bank and the Greenstar Food Co+Op and bring them back to the church where they are packaged up and handed out to community members.
John McQueeney, a volunteer for the food pantry program, moved to Ithaca in 2015 with his wife who also volunteers in the food pantry program. McQueeney said that upon moving to Ithaca, he and his wife were looking for some volunteer work to do since they were both retired and that the food pantry ended up being the perfect opportunity for them.
“We wanted [to do] something to help people,” McQueeney said. “So, we volunteered within the first few months we were here, and we’ve been doing it since.”
Building a community of volunteers
Ted Capogrossi has been the co-director of the food pantry program since 2019. He said the pantry started because of the Catholic mission to help those in need.
“We’re guided by our faith to help others,” Capogrossi said. “We’re here to make sure that people in need that come here for food, get the food that they need.”
Kathy Teeter is a Parishioner at Immaculate Conception Church. She said the pantry has given her the opportunity to give back to her community and has also helped her to create a community among the volunteers.
“You become really good friends with the people,” Teeter said. “We watch out for each other and it’s fun to do.”
Capogrossi said that over the years, the church has even seen interest from people outside the congregation who want to volunteer their time including a man who used to deliver donated groceries to the church from Greenstar.
“He was looking for a slot to replace that volunteer work that he was doing,” Capogrossi said. “He came a couple weeks ago and asked if he could come down and start working with him.”
A new process
Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, people used to come into the church and grab food. However, the pandemic forced the church to start pre-packaging up orders and handing them out outside the church. McQueeney said the pre-packaging method ended up working out better for them and they decided to keep the method even after the pandemic ended.
“It used to be open, and clients would come in and go through like aisles that were lined with food,” McQueeny said. “We took more volunteers to distribute it because it was larger number of people coming and it was more involved in distribution of food.”
According to the New York Health Foundation, 1 out of 10 residents in New York State struggle to put food on the table. With the Immaculate Conception Parish Food Pantry being one of the only pantries in the Ithaca area that is held weekly Capogrossi said they feed around 60 families a week although sometimes more people or less people show up.
“I think it varies on weather and time of year, how close to a check day or things like that,” Capogrossi said. “So, it’s kind of up and down.”
Augustine Chumo, pastor at Immaculate Conception Church said that feeding the hungry is a very important practice in the Catholic faith and that the food pantry at the church helps the congregation to take part in the mission.
“Without outreach or feeding the hungry, we miss out on the big mission of Christ,” Chumo said. “Feeding the hungry is part of the mission of Christ that we want to be part of.”
