Northwest Arkansas groups feeding hungry hampered by weather, but food available in crisis, organizers say

SPRINGDALE — Winter weather has shut down the offices, warehouses and dining rooms of agencies that regularly feed the hungry in Northwest Arkansas.

Ice covered the streets, preventing staff and volunteers from getting to their jobs or to homes to deliver.

But organizers insist they can help families in dire need of food.

Lori Proud, director of the city’s senior center, answered the phone Tuesday. She was at home with her family but faithfully answered every call “if anyone needs services, if anyone needs a meal,” she said.

“We’ll get them a meal if they need a meal,” Proud said.

Damon Donnell, director of student services at Springdale Public Schools, said he personally opened the district’s new treehouse pantry for a few hours each day the school was closed. Donnell said he served two families from the pantry on Tuesday and delivered two bags of groceries to families in critical need who had no way of getting to the pantry.

Deliveries went to families of five and seven, he said.

Donnell said he put his pickup truck in four-wheel drive, but he still hit parts of the roads that were pretty slick.

“It’s so difficult when we can’t predict things like this,” said Joanna Davis, director of ward care at First United Methodist Church in Springdale. “But when our volunteers couldn’t get there, we had no choice but to close.”

Several of the organizations expected to send their customers home with extra groceries on Monday, but the storm surprised the community by moving in overnight on Sunday.

The Springdale School District distributed 30,000 snack packages in the first semester of this school year, Donnell said. Snack packs are provided to needy children every Friday to ensure they are fed over the weekend. The snack pack includes things like peanut butter crackers, soup, and granola.

Many students are entitled to free or reduced rates for breakfast and lunch, which schools serve during classes.

School staff usually provide snack packs if they can determine that schools will be closed the next day. That didn’t happen in this storm, but Donnell said students enrolled in the program will receive packets of snacks on the first day schools reopen.

The Methodist Church serves a hot lunch every Wednesday, Davis reported. The church ministers to more than 125 people each week, or 250 in the summer when schools are on vacation, she said.

The Church also opens its Bread of Life pantry and His Helping Hands closet every Wednesday and Thursday. But those same volunteers leave a few bags of basic groceries each week — as well as some warm socks and sleeping bags at this time of year — at the church office in case anyone looks for help, Davis said.

“That’s how we’re able to help the most serious cases,” she said.

The Springdale Senior Center serves 75 to 150 hot meals daily from the commercial kitchen at its Park Street location, Proud said. The employees also prepare around 160 meals for Meals on Wheels customers. Volunteers deliver them every day.

Stolz said most seniors in the program should have frozen meals in their freezers. The program delivers a frozen meal every Thursday in addition to the daily meal.

The center had planned to prepare and deliver additional frozen meals on Monday, Proud said.

“Most people have food,” she said. “But it could be soup, not necessarily the things we want to eat.”

“We all have food in our homes that we don’t want to eat,” Donnell agreed.

Donnell said the food from the district pantry was nothing special. He packed peanut butter, jelly, and some bread.

“This will see her through,” he said.

The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank distributed about 11.75 million meals in 2022, a majority of them to nonprofits that directly serve the community, said Casey Cowan, the food bank’s director of client services. The panel also features mobile pantries in outlying towns and a supermarket-style pantry, Feed Rogers.

All of the food bank’s programs have been sidelined by the storm, Cowan said. She said community pantry and meal program organizers did not request extra portions before the storm.

“This weather has just hit us so hard, we don’t always have a good backup plan,” Cowan said.