The ongoing pandemic and the upcoming holiday season are a busy time for everyone, and Greenbelt churches are no exception. Multiple churches are involved with food pantries for families in need and have experienced a boom in donations and volunteers over the summer and in recent weeks.
“We’ve really depended on a strong and mighty force of people,” said Mary Ann Tretler, a parish leader of the St. Hugh of Grenoble Catholic Church. In her parish, the Ladies of Charity organization takes care of collecting and distributing non-perishable food items for the pantry.
The Covid-19 crisis has increased the number of pantry families by 50 percent, Tretler said. “Since the pandemic started, we basically have been getting a hundred bags and more a week from the Co-op donation program.”
The church and Co-op first came together during the holiday season three years ago to set aside bags of non-perishable foods that customers could purchase so that they would be sent to families in need. The overwhelmingly positive response from the community inspired the two organizations to keep it going.
This week, because of Thanksgiving, the Ladies of Charity has collected over 160 bags, Tretler said. St. Hugh plans to host a socially distanced Thanksgiving event Saturday, November 21 where families can pick up turkeys, vegetables and various side dishes.
For Christmas, Tretler said St. Hugh will decorate their Angel Tree with paper ornaments that parishioners can take and then donate Target gift cards or monetary contributions to purchase gift cards to be given to food pantry families.
“I am hopeful we’ll continue to get the support we need to help the families that need us,” Tretler said. The pantry has also distributed over $3,000 in Co-op gift cards from donations received for masks made available at the Police Station and the Farmers Market.
The MCF Community Church also plans to host a Thanksgiving event Saturday. Pastor Jeff Warner said the church has received a grant in response to Covid-19 that will be used to provide over 250 local families with food items for a Thanksgiving meal.
Warner praised the members of his church and Greenbelt for their “genuine heart to serve.” The pandemic has lessened what stores can donate due to economic strain from the Covid-19 pandemic, but he is confident in his volunteers to keep up their work collecting, bagging and distributing food items, Warner said.
When the coronavirus surged again over the summer, Warner along with Michael and Leah Moon, owners of DC Vegan Catering, started the Feed Greenbelt initiative.
This project partnered together the MCF Community Church and DC Vegan. Warner remarked that “the city came together in a way we’ve never seen before.”
Over 1,000 meals were served to the community and Greenbelt raised nearly $10,000 for the program as a result of “people erasing lines and coming together for a common cause of helping the community,” Warner said.
The Help-By-Phone charity also experienced a surge in volunteer help and community aid because of the pandemic and for the approaching holiday season. The Greenbelt Community Church has always been an “enormous supporter,” said Marsha Voigt, president of the board of directors.
Help-By-Phone relies on private donations and contributions from local businesses and organizations to provide for pantry families. Grant money is also a large contributor to Help-By-Phone’s success by providing money for the organization to purchase food for its pantry.
Voigt said the pantry stayed steady in terms of donation amounts once the pandemic hit the city. Help-By-Phone enforced social distancing and required anyone working in the pantries or picking up food bags to wear masks.
Of Covid-19’s effects since it started, Voigt said, “There are a number of smaller food drives that just did not happen in 2020.” She hopes that some will be able to resume, such as the Empty Bowls project (a biennial October event at the Greenbelt Community Church) where attendees are served soup in take-home bowls made by the Greenbelt pottery club.
Help-By-Phone sponsors the Safe Haven initiative which shelters homeless men over Christmas week at the Greenbelt Community Church and the Greenbelt Baptist Church, but this will not occur in 2020 due to limited space in the church.
Of the organization’s plans for the near future, Voigt said, “I can’t really see any change. We’ll keep seeing people.”
As is the case for the Maryland Christian Fellowship and St. Hugh of Grenoble, Voigt can count on parish members and Greenbelters to continue to give and donate: “Churches shut down Sunday services, but kept the pantries open.”
For more information about each church, visit mcfcc.org/, berwynpresbyterian.net or sthughofgrenoble.org.