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Open Pantry celebrates 30 years of service

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor



SPRINGFIELD The needs that spurred the creation of the Open Pantry Community Services in 1975 are still issues in the city three decades later.

Kevin Noonan, executive director of the non-profit agency, explained that factors have made conditions more difficult for low-income or homeless people.

The agency is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a dinner on Oct. 6. Noonan, and the agency's director of development, Dena Calvanese, spoke with Reminder Publications last week about the history and the future of the agency.

Calvanese explained in 1975 that members of the former Hope Congregational Church now the Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Church in Springfield were concerned about services available to the working poor and sent a letter to 53 churches in the city asking them to organized drives of canned and dry food. The goal was to establish a food pantry one similar to one operated by a church in Hartford, Conn.

Hope Congregational was the first home for the emergency food pantry and two years later a separate non-profit agency, the present Open Pantry, was formed. Its new home was in the Old First Church.

In 1975, 254 requests for food were fulfilled and in 2004, 24,522 requests were granted. For each request four days of food with three meals a day were given for a total of 294,254 meals supplied by the Pantry.

Over the past 30 years the services provided by the agency have grown and changed with the needs of the community. Currently the agency operates:

The Emergency Food Pantry at the Old First Church in Court Square;

A Holidays Meals program;

The Jefferson Avenue Shelter that provides temporary shelter for mothers and their children who are homeless;

Teen Living Program that provides temporary shelter for teenage mothers and their children whoa re homeless;

Loaves & Fishes Kitchen that serves lunch and dinner seven days a week;

The Open Door that offers housing, health, employment, literacy and substance abuse counseling;

Rutledge House & Tranquility House that provides a safe and sober living environment for single women who are homeless and in recovery from substance abuse;

And the Warming Place, an emergency homeless shelter for men and women.

"There are countless things we could do if we had the resources," said Noonan. He would like to see the agency develop permanent affordable housing in city, help people start their own businesses, operate a 24-hour homeless shelter, among other programs.

He noted that that is less money available for programs to help the poor from state and federal governments which creates greater competition among organizations that assist the same groups of people.

The changes affecting the poor and the homeless have changed for the worse in the city, he said.

"The introduction of crack has devastated those who are poor,"" he said.

He added that 30 years ago there were hospitals in existence that provided care and housing for people with mental illnesses. Now, he said, many of these people do not get the help they need and are on the street.

With the demolition of the former Hotel Charles on Main Street, Noonan said that the number of single room occupancy apartments have dramatically decreased.

"None of that housing has been replaced," he explained.

He said that more and more families and single women are turning up at the agency's homeless shelter, where once the homeless population in the city was all men. Currently the 75-bed Warming Place is turning away about five people a night, he said. In the winter the shelter has a "no turn-away" policy and Noonan anticipates a even greater number of people will come to the shelter for help.

He expressed concern that the high cost of fuel would have a significant impact on the working poor as they struggle with the decision on paying for food or heat.

Although tickets are no longer available for the anniversary celebration, Calvanese said that the organization gladly accepts donations to support their programs. She can be reached at 737-5355.