Food banks step up as shutdown leaves federal workers struggling

As the government shutdown continues, some furloughed federal workers are reaching out for help with keeping food on the table. And an area food bank is answering the call.

In Gaithersburg, Maryland, at Seneca Creek Community Church, boxes of food went out to federal workers and contractors in need. Among them was one federal worker who came to get boxes of food with her husband and young child.

“It’s hard that you don’t know when you’re going to get paid, how you’re going to pay your mortgage, your utilities, everything else. So it’s really hard. You cannot plan anything,” she said.

Radha Muthiah, CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, said the need was growing.

“This felt very much like the beginning of the pandemic to us, where people were really scrambling to be able to get food resources, uncertain about what’s going to happen,” she said.

Muthiah said the region has been “hit disproportionately” hard, and the shutdown was just one on top of many other challenges.

“We’d had many layoffs. We’d had fork-in-the-road separations. And the shutdown just comes on top of all of that. So it feels, as a food bank, that we were responding to multiple crises all at the same time,” Muthiah said.

Since launching the effort, the food bank has more than doubled the number of boxes it brings to each site. Last week, at the first event, 150 boxes were handed out — this week it was 400.

In Gaithersburg, Sharon Camacho-Meakes and the Community Hope Center hosted the food bank at their pantry inside the church.

“We’d recently seen a peak of clients that stopped coming in the past years, but are returning. So we were noticing that more people need support and food,” Camacho-Meakes said.

The Capital Area Food Bank organized five distribution events where federal workers and contractors could pick up boxes of vegetables and nonperishable food.

“We were seeing that the need was indeed significant for individuals who are trying to make ends meet without having that paycheck,” Muthiah said.

Muthiah said the plan is to continue having the events for federal workers and contractors until the shutdown is over.

To learn more about how and when the food bank is providing workers with good, click here.

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