As the holidays roll around, families across Central Texas plan which delicious, home-cooked dishes to put on the Christmas dinner table. Just a month earlier, these same famlies likely feasted on steaming turkeys, potatoes, and casseroles for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, lavish holiday meals are a far-fetched dream for some Texans — around 34,000 people, according to Bob Gager, Shepherd’s Heart executive director.
These are Central Texans who are sitting at or below the poverty line, Gager said. Another whopping 46,000 meet ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed) standards, meaning they are considered middle-class families, but are only one emergency away from requiring Shepherd’s Heart’a services. In all of Texas, 42% of residents are below that threshold.
While Shepherd’s Heart won’t be open for the holidays, Gager said he and his team are doing all they can to prepare the community in advance for a comfortable, enjoyable end of the year.
“We’re in a state of running, running, running,” Gager said. “This is the busiest time of the year for us — a lot going on at one time.”
In the front office space of Shepherd’s Heart sit a multitude of toys, from baby dolls to board games and Fisher-Price trikes — all for its 16th annual Toys From The Heart Christmas Toy Drive. Gager said there were over 40 locations across Waco where people could drop off their new and gently used toys for donation to children in need.
“[When] it started out, we were just going to take care of some homeless kids at Waco ISD,” Gager said. “Now it’s grown to be a major program. Last year, we served 3,800 children.”
On the corner of 15th Street and Mary Avenue, Caritas is in the midst of its own holiday preparations. Caritas Director of Development Allison Denman said the food pantry did a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway in November, and this month passed out spiral cut hams. Otherwise, Caritas will continue to offer its regular services, operating first and foremost as a pantry.
“We try to be really intentional about having holiday food items,” Denman said. “We know that food is such a huge part of holidays, and people want to be able to celebrate and spend time with their families, so we’re really mindful of that and what we have in the pantry.”
Denman said the holiday season is busy for Caritas, as these months typically receive the most attention from the community. However, she wishes more people remembered the people they are helping through Caritas often require year-round assistance — a need that has always been there.
“I think it’s a little bit of a wake-up call,” Denman said. “There are people that are needing these resources, not just on November 1, but they’ve been needing them.”
Denman said community members have also come to rely on the organization’s other services, such as case management, workforce development, and financial literacy classes. Caritas offers federal benefits assistance, including getting community members signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Denman said the need for these services has also greatly increased in the past few months. A government shutdown that began in October halted federal funding for SNAP benefits, putting many families who relied on the resource in an uncomfortable situation.
“It’s just such terrible timing,” Denman said. “Need has been increasing all year long, and then for [SNAP] to be taken away as a resource, it just puts so many people in jeopardy — having to choose between food and rent and paying bills.”
In August, Caritas saw a 20% increase in need from the beginning of the year, with another spike rolling in during the government shutdown.
“There’s a little bit of a recovery time period that’s needed when people lose those resources,” she said. “Even once they have them back, it just takes longer to recover from that.”
Central Texas Food Bank President and CEO Sari Vatske said once the shutdown hit, her team realized they needed to ramp up distribution, which led to scheduling 50 mobile food pantries to distribute throughout the counties the food bank serves.
“On average, there are about 127,000 households in our 21 counties that rely on SNAP, which equates to about 270,000 individuals,” Vatske said. “An average household receives about $350 per month. So in all, we were looking at $44 million missing from the wallets of families to be able to go and purchase food on their own in the grocery store in a dignified way.”
Thanksgiving preparations began even earlier in July, since turkey prices were at their lowest. Vatske said Central Texas Food Bank was able to purchase a total of 23,000 to give away, but prices were still higher than usual this year due to the avian flu.
While the holidays are hectic at all three locations, Vatske said she finds summer to be the time of year the organization experiences the most demand from the community. This is largely due to the absence of free or reduced-price meal access for children, and due to the increased cost of air conditioning and childcare.
Vatske said the food bank’s relationship with partner pantries is critical. Annually, the organization’s Austin location distributes between 7 and 8 million pounds of food each year. Vatkse said the upcoming Waco location is an eagerly anticipated expansion since it will allow for more efficient service to other local pantries.
Upon conducting a local community needs assessment, Vatske said she and her team found that no local organization in the nine northern counties of Central Texas, which experience a higher rate of food insecurity, has a commercial production kitchen — a feature included in the new facility to provide after-school or summer meals. Eventually, she also wants to add a garden for growing produce on-site.
The Waco facility will also provide an option for families with more extensive operating hours and help with SNAP and Texas Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment.
Vatske said three or four volunteer opportunities will be available — on-site in the sorting room, in the kitchen preparing meals, at mobile pantries, and restocking shelves in the market.
“We know that volunteering can bring the community together, and we’re excited to help engage all kinds of groups, whether it’s students from Baylor or MCC or corporations,” Vatske said. “We know that it’s definitely a community-building and team-building experience, so we’re excited to replicate the success that we’ve had here at the Austin facility.”
While volunteers are certainly appreciated, donations are the best way to support Shepherd’s Heart, Caritas, and Central Texas Food Bank through the holiday season this year.
“There are so many people that come to us who will say, ‘I never thought that I would be here,’” Denman said. “You just don’t know what can happen, so [we] just encourage people to have that kind of empathy and grace for people who need the resources.”
