Working Together to Feed the Hungry

Working Together to Feed the Hungry

Charles Romans

The Ashland Beacon

The Argillite Community Service Center on RT 207 in Greenup, Kentucky is dedicated to filling in the gaps for the community it serves. Located in a former United Methodist Church, the organization operates as, among other things, a food pantry for those in the community who suffer from food insecurity.

Lew Nicholls, who served as both a Judge in Greenup County and a former Democratic member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing District 98 in 2016, explained how the organization came to serve the community.

“It started last year,” Nicholls said. “It used to be the little Argillite Church,” he said. “And it ended up, after COVID, that there was only one lady left of the congregation. So, the District Superintendent for the Eastern Kentucky Districts said that under our discipline he would give us the property if we would put some kind of ministry in it,” Nicholls said.

“We, the Greenup First United Methodist Church, thought about it and decided that was an awful big undertaking to start a food pantry; but that was what was needed and what people wanted to do,” he said.

In order to grapple with the large undertaking, Nicholls said that he contacted over half a dozen of the smaller churches in the Argillite area. Most of these smaller churches, he said, had five to a dozen regularly attending members, and he invited them to join with Greenup First United Methodist Church to help feed the hungry. The smaller churches agreed, he said, and they incorporated and established a board.

“Mike Maynard from the Hillcrest-Bruce Mission in Ashland is on our board,” Nicholls said. “He knows a lot about this sort of thing, and he has been very helpful.” Nicholls said that Maynard helped them secure refrigeration, and when they received donations, they also purchased freezers so that they would be able to store food. Then came signing a contract with the large food bank, Facing Hunger, in Huntington, West Virginia.

Facing Hunger distributes food to food pantries in the area, Nicholls explained, and then the food pantries distribute the food to those individuals and families in need.

“We get our food from basically four different sources,” Nicholls said. “The first one is USDA Food. There are monthly boxes, and you have to be under 60 years of age and meet certain federal guidelines. The guidelines do have financial components, he said, but if the individual is under 60 and has qualified for SNAP benefits, then they will qualify. “If you are over 60 and you qualify for SNAP, then you would qualify for what we call a Senior Box,” Nicholls said.

The senior box is filled with a variety of dried goods, he said, that have a good shelf life and don’t need to be refrigerated. “The Monthly Box we would supplement out of our own pockets,” Nicholls said. “With that and the donations we receive we buy eggs, milk, bread, and things like that.”

“The next place we get food is called Rescue Food. That is food we get from River Cities Harvest. That is made up from stores like Walmart and Kroger that has been on the shelf for a while, been reduced, but still hasn’t sold,” he explained. “It is still good food, but they are ready to throw it away. So, they can either throw it away or give it to River Cities Harvest. Then we go pick some of that food up and distribute it to the people who come into our pantry.”

The last way the pantry gets food is through economic purchases, Nicholls said. “We shop sales from a lot of different grocery stores,” he explained. They also purchase other needed items for the community as well, including toiletries, toothbrushes, deodorant, and similar items. Money for these purchases, he said, also comes from donations.

“Now we serve probably 350 people,” Nicholls said. “And I think we are starting to push toward 400.” The numbers increase almost daily, he said, and there was a sharp increase during the recent government shutdown when people were in danger of losing SNAP benefits. “So, we have had more people come recently. And every food pantry is experiencing that increase all over the country.”

“So, we are feeding between 350 and 400 people, and its really a blessing to see people having their needs met. It has also been a blessing to work with all of these smaller churches, and we all have the best time working together. And I guess that’s it in a nutshell,” Nicholls said of the ministry. “Helping people and working together.”

The Argillite Community Service Center will continue dispensing monthly boxes as long as there is a need, Nicholls said. For more information, they can be reached on their Facebook page, through email at ArgilliteCSC@gmail.com, on their website at argillitecsc.com, or by telephone at 606-473-3257. Their physical address is 8091 State RT 207, Argillite, KY.