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Westchester food pantry banks on small business for support

Oct-02-09, 10:55 AM

11 Votes

When The Food Bank for Westchester began a holiday program encouraging companies to give a monetary donation in the name of their clients in lieu of gifts, Concorde Staffing Group in White Plains was one of the first to sign up.

Since then, more than 35 companies have gotten on board – a big boost for the nonprofit, which has seen demand for food spike in the past year.

“Two-thirds of what we get donated here in terms of money comes from corporations and individuals,” said Christina Rohatynskyj, executive director of The Food Bank for Westchester Inc. “It really adds up. Over the last 10 or 15 years, corporations don’t give out big hunks of money anymore like they used to, so whatever we get from Concorde Cares (the staffing agency’s program) adds up, it makes a huge difference.”

The Food Bank, created in 1989, provides food and technical assistance to food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters in Westchester County, which in turn offer groceries to take home or cooked meals.

“We provide 200 agencies with food and assistance and we believe that there are 200,000 people in Westchester who are hungry or at risk of hunger needing support,” Rohatynskyj said. “Demand has increased. Our agencies are reporting anywhere from 15 percent increase to 150 percent increase in the number of clients that are coming through the door either asking for a meal or asking for groceries. We just did an average for this past fiscal year and the demand increased by 15 percent overall, and yet our food distribution only increased 9 percent, so we didn’t meet the need.”

Bill Bernstein, vice president of Concorde, has been a Food Bank board member for 10 years.

“It makes more sense to be a good corporate citizen and make a donation to (a) charity … in Westchester,” Bernstein said. “Being involved with the Food Bank is really complimentary to what we do. We’re showing our corporate clients that we care about the community that we live in and we care about the people who walk into our doors.”

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