Cande de Leon remembers seeing hungry children drinking cold soup right out of a can. It’s an image that stays with him, and one that continues to motivate his work as the chief mission engagement officer for the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Arizona.

The Catholic philanthropic organization serves the poor in Arizona by dishing out 2.5 million meals yearly at its charity dining rooms, providing over $8 million in rent and utility assistance and distributing 4.7 million pounds of food through its central food bank, among other services.

Food pantries operated by St. Vincent de Paul conferences, designated groups at local parishes, feed thousands more with food boxes. Vincentians, St. Vincent de Paul volunteers, also bring the love of Christ through their home visits.

A creative program in conjunction with Albertsons-Safeway to beef up stock at local pantries launched last March and has helped feed the hungry across Arizona. De Leon is leading the charge as a new phase of the program now gets underway at parishes to help feed an increased number of hungry families.

Families like the one that reached out to St. Vincent de Paul last February. A single father with six children, including a toddler, was on the streets. Having lost their home and unable to pay for even a modest hotel room due to jacked-up pricing during spring training, they were out begging for money to pay for a place to stay.

“They were without a home and didn’t know what to do,” de Leon said. “The wife was out of the picture.”

De Leon was able to find shelter for them and Jerry Castro, a volunteer from the Sacred Heart Parish St. Vincent de Paul conference in Phoenix, brought the family a food box and can opener.

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Jerry, like, what are you taking the food box for? They have no stove. How are they going to cook it? What are they going to do?’”

Turns out the volunteer had the right idea. When de Leon came back later, loaded down with buckets of fried chicken and some hefty side orders, he found the kids devouring what was in the food box — including the cold soup.

“It broke my heart. But Jerry knew exactly what he was doing. Where we would take things for granted, like what’s in our cupboard or what’s in our fridge … they jumped at it and were eating cold soup because they were starving.”

De Leon returned the next morning and he noticed right away that every single scrap of food in the hotel room had been eaten. The two huge family dinners. The food box. Gone.

The powerful vignette is a microcosm of what’s going on in the wider community as demand for food assistance has risen substantially. “Our demand could have easily doubled,” de Leon said, “but the problem is that we don’t have the food to meet that demand.

“We’ve seen increases of about 20 to 25-percent. In some places, it’s up 50-percent.” 

Creative response

So why all the demand? To get to the precipitating causes, you have to go back to the federal budget last fall. Hundreds of thousands of Arizonans lost what are known as SNAP benefits.

SNAP, short for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, helps low-income families with food by issuing EBT cards that work like debit cards at participating stores.

“All the food pantries saw this huge demand because the people who were receiving food benefits, they lost them,” de Leon said.

Once the federal budget passed, some of the requirements for receiving SNAP benefits changed. “We have about 450,000 individuals who lost their benefits,” de Leon said. Sometimes those individuals represent an elderly couple or a family where there are young children.

But Providence and big-hearted Arizonans saw to the need.

“The timing couldn’t have been better because we were able to have a system in place to meet that demand.”

That system is Feed Our Neighbors Together — FONT — which entails an agreement with Albertsons-Safeway across Arizona to fight hunger. Those who shop at one of the 132 stores can donate food or cash to the effort.

“We raised about 30,000 pounds of food which is equivalent to an 18-wheeler truck,” de Leon said.

Each one of the Albertsons-Safeway stores has a parish partner that is responsible for picking up the food and transporting it to the parish pantry.

“We trained the Vincentians to go meet with their Albertsons-Safeway store manager to talk to them and tell them about the program and then they set it up,” de Leon said. “Simultaneously, Albertsons-Safeway told their store managers what was going on.”

The next step in the FONT campaign is to partner with the 94 parishes and 24 missions spread throughout the Diocese of Phoenix. Among them are 80 parish St. Vincent de Paul Conferences. Parishioners will be asked to bring non-perishable food items to the church for distribution to the needy in their area.

“October will mark the first time we coordinate a diocesan-wide food drive in alignment with FONT,” de Leon said. “Rather than doing the whole state of Arizona this time, we’re going to focus on just the Diocese of Phoenix.”

For parishes that do not have a St. Vincent de Paul conference or a food pantry, de Leon said they are working to partner with the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization committed to service already present in most parishes, to coordinate food drives.

‘Our friends’

Jerry Castro, 68, grew up at Sacred Heart Parish just south of downtown Phoenix, and has been an active member of the church’s St. Vincent de Paul Society for 41 years. He knows that donations of food to stock the pantry at Sacred Heart and at parishes around the Diocese of Phoenix are crucial.

“With the reductions in food stamps, lots of them are getting less food, especially the seniors,” Castro said. Visitors to the pantry include families and those experiencing homelessness. On the third Saturday of the month, the pantry at Sacred Heart is open for guests to stop by and receive bags of food.

“We give each family anywhere from four to five bags of food, depending on family size,” Castro said. One of those bags contains frozen items like hamburger meat or chicken. Another bag holds staple items like macaroni and cheese, rice or tuna.

The conference also gives out hygiene items like toilet paper, soap and toothbrushes.

“One of the biggest things is that we come to see our neighbors as friends. You know, we’ll see them at Mass. Everything’s confidential, but we’ll go up to them and they want to give us a big hug.”

Castro remembers visiting the home of a family of eight that was going through hard times. The father lost his job and his vehicle. They were having trouble paying the rent and utilities.

“We were blessed to be able to help them,” Castro said. The father is back on his feet now, and the parish St. Vincent de Paul conference was able to assist them with rent and utilities plus a bus pass so the father was able to get to work.

“We just thank God we’re able to provide for this family.”