A popular dictum is last week’s election had a lot to do with “the price of eggs,” a problem leaders of local nonprofit food assistance efforts say they’re seeking in the form of high demand as they get ready for their annual Thanksgiving efforts.
“We are definitely facing a really high demand, and the demand seems to just be rising and rising as time goes on,” Dan Parks, general manager of Southeast Alaska Food Bank, said in an interview Tuesday morning.
High food prices are cited by Parks and other local officials as a primary factor for the demand, although inflation both nationally and locally has dropped from COVID-era rates of more than 8% in Alaska to about 1.5% recently, according to a regional economic study published by Rain Coast Data this fall. But that doesn’t negate the cumulative increase that’s occurred the past few years or Juneau-specific factors such as the challenge of transporting goods here.
“People talk all over the place about how inflation is out of control — blah, blah, blah — but where we are it’s not unheard of for a gallon of milk to be seven or eight bucks a gallon,” Parks said.
Thanksgiving preparations now underway include St. Vincent de Paul Juneau assembling 400 to 450 food baskets containing all of the groceries necessary for traditional holiday family meals and The Salvation Army Juneau Corps planning a communal Thanksgiving Day meal for about 400 to 500 people. Volunteers are being sought for both and donation drives on behalf of the food bank are underway.
An annual food drive at Super Bear IGA Supermarket on Saturday brought in 1,733 pounds of food donations, and about 2,500 pounds of total donations — which for the first time included pet food, said Shannon Adamson, community outreach coordinator for the Juneau Central Labor Council, which organizes the event. The pet food collection was in cooperation with Juneau Animal Rescue, which is seeking to expand its shelter.
About 1,600 pounds of food was collected at last year’s drive, Adamson said. Donated items go to both the food bank as well as the Thanksgiving baskets being assembled by St. Vincent and other entities.
“We had a family at the very beginning (this year) that dropped off an entire back of a minivan, and then went shopping at Super Bear and brought us three carts worth of food,” she said. “It was incredible.”
The food bank is scheduled to host its annual food drive from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Nov. 23 — the Saturday before Thanksgiving — at Super Bear and Foodland IGA. The goal for that event is far more ambitious, with a target of “50,000 pounds of more,” according to the food bank’s website.
Donations to the food bank have fluctuated this year, but “this past month or two has been particularly good,” Parks said. But the number of people coming to the food bank’s week distribution has increased from about 80 to 90 this spring to about 100 to 110 now — who are collecting food to feed about 300 to 350 people.
The increased demand seems to be about more than just inflation, Parks said.
“I also think that part of it has to do with sort of the stigma on using community resources changing over the last couple few years,” he said. “I’ve just started to notice that people are a lot more willing to talk about their difficulties and seek resources where they’re available.”
Donations for the Thanksgiving food baskets are scheduled to continue until Wednesday, Nov. 20, with student volunteers assembling them for distribution the following day, said Dave Ringle, executive director of the SVDP Juneau chapter. The Thanksgiving baskets are scheduled to be delivered throughout Juneau on Nov. 23, with about 80 to 100 people typically involved in that effort.
Signups for baskets, being a volunteer distributor and other information are available at https://svdpjuneau.org/event/thanksgiving-food-baskets.
While such community efforts are an annual tradition, the Thanksgiving meal served by The Salvation Army will be a new experience for Petr Yanosokiov, who along with his wife took over as co-leaders of the Juneau corps in July. A citizen of the Czech Republic who spent the past six years in London, it will be his first full-scale celebration of the holiday.
But in an interview Tuesday he said preparations for the communal meal, scheduled again at midday at the Juneau Yacht Club, are going smoothly thanks to the help of lots of people involved with it in years past. Local restaurants and other businesses are again providing food — including Alaska Seafood Co. smoking turkeys provided by Foodland — and plenty of volunteers are signing up.
“This is something new for me — the volunteer work here, and the willingness of people to give their things, money, time, abilities, everything,” he said. “It’s huge comparing to Europe and especially comparing to Czech Republic because the tradition was broken by the Communist regime and it was not built on after those (more than) 30 years when it’s gone. And so it’s amazing to see how many people are willing to help on the other side.”
Volunteer and other information about The Salvation Army in Juneau is at https://juneau.salvationarmy.org/juneau_corps.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
Members of the Juneau Central Labor Council food drive and volunteers sort items during a food drive Saturday at Super Bear IGA Supermarket. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
