An annual program that distributes Thanksgiving meals to more than a thousand Maine families is more needed this year than ever before, according to its organizers.
The Brewer-based nonprofit Food and Medicine is distributing 1,675 boxes alongside nearly 70 other local groups this year, executive director Jack McKay said.
Now in the 23rd year of the program, organizers emphasized the urgency of combating food insecurity this year amid delays to SNAP benefits, layoffs and furloughs in the federal government.
“The food insecurity this year is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. The numbers of folks and the panic and the concern that folks have for feeding themselves is huge,” McKay said Wednesday.
This year, 160 of the baskets are being sent to workers who were recently laid off in Baileyville, and more than 200 will go to federal workers who were furloughed during the government shutdown, mostly in Kittery, according to McKay.
“There’s been greater demand this year than any year,” McKay said. When the program first started, the group delivered less than 150 boxes. In the last few years, it’s been around 1,600.
Each box includes 19 items for a Thanksgiving meal and a recipe book, according to McKay.
The program is sponsored by the Eastern Maine Labor Council, for which McKay is also the president. Food and Medicine raises about $100,000 each year to buy produce from local farmers for the Thanksgiving baskets, he said.
“From its inception, Food and Medicine has seen farmers as part of the solution,” said Prentice Grassi, owner of Villageside Farm in Freedom, which provides carrots, beets and onions for the meal boxes. “Solidarity Harvest purchases the produce at fair market value from contributing farmers. We sold this year about 5,000 pounds of our own produce,” he added.
Penquis CAP, a Bangor-based nonprofit, is also providing 1,000 turkeys this year for the Thanksgiving meals, president and CEO Kara Hay said in a statement.
“This is a way to show true solidarity between farmers, workers, unions and volunteers, so that families in hard times can have a nourishing meal for Thanksgiving and oftentimes for the whole week,” said Ashlynn Ward, a state board member of the Maine State Nurses Association and a steward at Northern Light Health.
