Salisbury Urban Ministries’ food pantry reopens
SALISBURY, Md. – After being closed temporarily, Salisbury Urban Ministries’ Lazarus food pantry is back open, helping feed those in need. Ministry staff say they’re not just feeding the hungry, but helping the community as a whole. “I think that’s kind of what’s driving us right now, is meeting the needs of people we’ve been called to serve, and it’s difficult wanting to do all that you can do, but I think that’s kind of what drives the small stuff right now,” said executive director Debbie Donaway.
Staff spent the morning Thursday bagging up and handing out food that will help feed people dealing with food insecurity. “We look at particularly the family size. Everybody’s getting a bag of different food that has vegetables in it. We’re doing turkey or chicken, cereal for children,” said Donaway.
Ministry staff tells us they are washing their hands frequently and social distancing to help prevent the spread. “We went through several scenarios in the last few days preparing for this. How can we keep our distancing within the building? How can we serve our clients and keep the distancing? It’s been a challenge,” said Donaway. The ministry tells 47 ABC they’re requiring staff to sanitize and wash their hands as soon as they walk in the building, and are not allowing staff to share phones or keyboards.
Donaway says it’s key to make sure everyone is healthy so that they can continue to serve their community. “Just really trying to focus on staying healthy, I mean, because I need everyone that’s in that building to be healthy right now,” said Donaway.
Another key focus of the ministry is children. Director of the kid’s cafe ministry Carlyse Matthews says that the after school program has changed now that kids are at home, but she’s still making sure their services are continuing to help children in the community. “We’re not having them in the building, but will still keep in contact with the children. What we have been doing to keep our program running is we deliver food bags once a week and we also went and purchased workbooks and packets and dropped them off,” said Matthews.
Matthews says the workbooks and activities are meant to keep up the quality of the children’s education. The ministry tells 47 ABC they’re calling parents weekly to check in, and see how their children are doing. “We care about the kids, definitely. We want to make sure the families are taken care of just as well as the kids are, but still making sure they succeed even in the midst of all this that’s going on. We want them to be successful,” said Matthews.
The ministry says that overall, their goal is to make sure that people lacking resources can be as happy and healthy as possible during this time. “How easy would it be to just stay home and say, ‘You know, I’m not gonna put myself in the situation.’ It won’t be easy, but I think with all the stuff right now there’s this conscious thing that I want to do something a little bit bigger than what I am, and I want to reach out,” said Donaway.
Salisbury Urban Ministry says the Maryland Food Bank plays a key part in helping them provide food to people in need. If you’d like to find other places offering food, you can visit the Maryland Food Bank’s website and click the button on the top right of the screen that says “find food”.
