September 08, 2020

Saraid Gonzalez:
Hi, I’m Saraid Gonzalez. Welcome to “Sullivan 180 Presents …Take Five!” Today. Our guest is Kathy Kreiter and she is on the front lines of the community’s response. Hi, Kathy. Welcome.

Kathy Kreiter:
Good morning, Saraid, how are you?

Saraid Gonzalez:
I’m good! Thank you for joining us. Can you introduce yourself and your job title and introduce your organization?

Kathy Kreiter:
Sure. So my name is Kathy Kreiter. I am the program administrator for the Sullivan County Federation for the Homeless. We were established in 1987 as a small soup kitchen and have grown exponentially over the last 31 plus years. We now are a soup kitchen and food pantry. We have some housing programs and such, and we’re basically, we would like to provide education to consumers, and goods, and services to those who are without them to try to lift them up out of poverty as part of our mission.
Saraid Gonzalez:
Can you talk a little bit about what the Federation has been doing during this time?

Kathy Kreiter:
Sure. Early in March.. March 13th… we made a decision to shut our dining room down to the public and to not allow folks to come inside. We had a clothing corner where folks could come and kind of shop for clothes, but we had to get rid of all that stuff. We started to serve all our meals outdoors. So everything is wrapped. Everything was ‘to go’. We were still continuing to do breakfast and lunch, but as time went on, we saw a big drop in the numbers for breakfast, so we have kind of suspended that for the moment. It’s not going away. We’re just not doing it ‘at the moment’. We also decided to increase our biweekly food pantries to once a week, which we have been doing since that day as well, and there is certainly a need. There’s been a lot of other folks around the county that have been kind of ‘plugging the holes’ if you will. We’re all in this, kind of working together, but we have definitely seen, we’re serving right now about 75 families a week and that number keeps growing every week, and people that we’ve never seen before, we see now.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Any other challenges that you’ve faced?

Kathy Kreiter:
Well, one of the things that we did, in order to continue to be able to serve the food the way we were, I brought a pop up tent from home: those kinds of pop ups, like you see at a street fair. And we had my husband rig it all up with..we didn’t have plexiglass.. but we had clear shower curtains and all. That’s what we were using for a couple of months, but I really knew we needed something a little bit more stable and a little sturdier. So we did reach out to Sullivan Renaissance, and we also reached out to M&T bank and together they funded us to purchase a shed. It’s a 14 by 14 shed…I say ‘Food Palace’, but you know, shed is the word you would be looking for. It has shelving inside and double doors in the front and a door in the back. So we can take deliveries right through there, but it’s much more stable. It makes life so much easier for the folks we serve and for the people that are trying to serve the food!

Saraid Gonzalez:
So do you have positive experiences that you’d like to share?

Kathy Kreiter:
Well, I have to tell you: many people that have supported us in the past. Many people that I have never met or known your name, just started to really care. They came out of the woodwork! I will say that calling, emailing, sending us a check, “What can I do? How can I help?” And when we were limiting our volunteer times, we still need some muscle to unload trucks once or twice a month. I’m just not going to name a bunch of names, but there was somebody who was kind of working-at-home, and was able to coordinate a lot of volunteer opportunities. Like, somebody has time, somebody has a need… And she put them all together. And that really worked very well. So that was great. It was just such a good, it was a very lonely time here for awhile. It was very difficult for awhile, and so many people made it less difficult, just by a word or a thought or a good deed. And here we are to tell about it. So that’s a wonderful thing!

Saraid Gonzalez:
What can ommunity members do to help your organization?

Kathy Kreiter:
Twice a month, it’s generally the second Tuesday and the third Tuesday of the month, we have big deliveries that we could use a little muscle for an hour or two to unload, and help folks, load their cars or whatever. That’s one thing. Certainly. We would welcome any monetary donations. If you go into ShopRite in Monticello, they have like a paper bag with a little note on it that tells you what you could purchase and put in there. And that is sent to us. Right now, we’re really only accepting donations of food if they come directly food bank, our food partners, or directly from the store.

Saraid Gonzalez:
How can folks, if they want to donate, is there a number, an address that you could share with them?

Kathy Kreiter:
Well, you can go to our website, (which is not a fancy website), but it is there and it’s www.scf.org. And when the first page comes up, if you look, I think there’s button right there that says donate, and you can click on that and I’ll take you right to where you need to be in. And one more thing, I would like anybody who’s listening to this to know: the name of our organization can sometimes be a little bit of a misnomer because someone who might need a little help with food. You might think, ‘Oh, well, I’m not homeless, so I can’t go there’, but that name was given to the organization long time ago, and we never rebranded it. And I don’t know if we ever will, but I would like anybody within the sound of my voice to understand and know that if you need a little bit of help, you are welcomed to come here. We serve working people that are just struggling to make ends meet. Some people who are retired, seniors, veterans, you just need to show up. Our pantries are every Friday, 11:30 to about 1:30, depending on how many folks. Bring their own bags or boxes, because we really can’t provide that, and just make sure you wear a mask, and social distance on the line. And we will be very happy to help you. If it’s not a Friday, call us 794-2604) or 798-8774. And we will help. And we want to help. Lunch. It’s served every day, onday through Thursday, 12 to 1. I really thank you for the opportunity.

Saraid Gonzalez:
Thank you for joining us.