KITTY HAWK, N.C. — For 33 years, the Beach Food Pantry has stepped up for the Outer Banks community, helping families put food on the table every day. That service might be eight times higher in the month of November as families who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) wait to see what happens during the government shutdown.
"We are looking at 1900 households that may potentially need us in the month of November, when our max capacity would typically be considered 240," said Elisabeth Silverthorne, executive director of the Beach Food Pantry in Kitty Hawk.
That's eight times the number of people the Beach Food Pantry in Dare County is typically prepared to serve. But it's all dependent on what happens with SNAP benefits in the month of November.
"When you think about the number of added meals and the number of added people, it would be something like 7500 meals per day that would need to be acquired in order to be able to take care of just the people on SNAP," said Silverthorne.
With the potential delay in benefits, the organization is preparing for what might come.
"We are able, and have in the past, added service hours, added service days. We also have some contingency plans in place to be able to move to a different location if need be, in order to work through additional people more quickly. We're also looking at some other options in terms of being able to set up a pop up market that's available 24/7, or something like that. The main thing, though, is that we don't want to panic. We have contingency plans, we can set them up quickly, but we're not going to operationalize any of that until we're not able to handle it based on what we're already doing here now, which has been successful," said Silverthorne.
Right now, what the Beach Food Pantry needs most is for the Outer Banks community to do what they've always done — lend a supportive hand.
"Our community has never let us down. We believe that the community will step up, we believe that we will get the resources that we need. But we do need people to be mindful that this is a marathon and not a sprint," said Silverthorne.
Silverthorne explained what that support can look like right now.
"Mostly just the contingency plans at this moment. But I mean, certainly if that comes to pass, where we see that much more demand, we are going to need everyone in the community that has the capacity to donate in some way to do that. So funding is going to be extremely important. Food is also what can be very helpful to us, paper bags, all of the things that we normally say, but definitely we're going to need it all," said Silverthorne.
Though there is a lot of uncertainty at this point, it's a storm the organization is ready to weather.
"We've been around for 33 years, so this is not our first moment of seeing a crisis in the community and being able to serve through it. And we don't intend that this is going to be the last thing that we are serving through either," said Silverthorne.
For more information about the Beach Food Pantry and how you can get involved, head to its website here.
