{"id":4717,"date":"2025-10-16T21:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4717\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T21:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:47:10","slug":"government-cuts-local-impact-helping-harvest-working-to-overcome-funding-cuts-and-future-uncertainties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/4717\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Cuts, Local Impact: Helping Harvest Working to Overcome Funding Cuts and Future Uncertainties"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Susan Shelly McGovern for Berks County Community Foundation<\/p>\n

Pictured above: The Helping Harvest van provides a mobile feeding option for individuals who are unable to commute to a food pantry or kitchen.<\/p>\n

Maria has always worked hard to make sure her children have enough food and other necessities. There seldom was extra, but they always had enough.<\/p>\n

When Maria, of Reading, was diagnosed earlier this year with Stage 5 kidney disease, however, the single mother didn\u2019t know what to do. Unable to work, faced with medical bills, and receiving only 60% of her wages through short-term disability insurance, having enough food for her family was suddenly a very frightening uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Maria and her children are by no means alone. Food insecurity has increased dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Pennsylvania, more than 1.7 million people \u2013 including one in six children \u2013 are at risk for hunger,<\/a>\u00a0according to\u00a0Feeding America<\/a>, a nonprofit organization that operates more than 200 food banks across the United States.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Bulk items are often donated so that Helping Harvest can break them down into smaller portions for families and individuals.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Maria reached out and was able to secure immediate assistance from\u00a0Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank<\/a>, a community resource serving Berks and Schuylkill counties. That help has given her family access to adequate food supplies as they wait for their application for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to be processed and, hopefully, approved.<\/p>\n

But that ability to provide immediate and adequate aid for those in need is becoming increasingly difficult, according to Jay Worrall, president of Helping Harvest and board chair of\u00a0Feeding Pennsylvania<\/a>, an organization that promotes food banks within the state and assists them in obtaining necessary resources and support.<\/p>\n

Cuts in federal funding for food distribution programs made earlier this year are straining the ability of food banks across the state and nation to continue supplying resources to those most in need.<\/p>\n

Worrall said federal cuts resulted in a loss of $3 million to Helping Harvest, equivalent to about 15% of the food it distributes annually.<\/p>\n

Those cuts, coupled with stalled state funding caused by Pennsylvania\u2019s ongoing budget impasse and impending cuts to SNAP, are resulting in trying times for Helping Harvest, Worrall said.<\/p>\n

SNAP benefits could be reduced by as much as $11 million in Schuylkill County and up to $26.8 million in Berks, according to Worrall, affecting thousands of families. In addition, it is unclear whether the recent\u00a0shutdown of the federal government<\/a>, which was still underway at the time this article was written, might have long-reaching implications for the future of Helping Harvest.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"An assembly line of volunteers fill parcels with packaged food.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemand for our services continues to increase, but we\u2019re left with fewer resources to meet those needs. The worst of the SNAP cuts haven\u2019t even taken place yet, but people are anticipating them and already looking to us for extra help. It\u2019s the perfect storm and it\u2019s making our work very difficult,\u201d Worrall explained.<\/p>\n

Helping Harvest\u00a0recently announced cuts to some of its programs in Schuylkill County<\/a>, starting in November. The food bank will stop providing food to about a dozen pantry and mobile market sites, a move Worrall attributed to federal funding cuts and the state\u2019s budget impasse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have more demand and less food,\u201d Worrall said, during a\u00a0recent interview with the\u00a0Pottsville Republican Herald.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWe truly wish this change was not necessary, but our hand has been forced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"A Helping Harvest volunteer hands out meals to local students.<\/p>\n

Although the food pantry has made some organizational changes and altered the way it processes and distributes food to try to make up the shortfalls it\u2019s experiencing, it is unable to keep up with decreased funding and increasing demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working to close that gap, but we\u2019re not going to make up $3 million in one year,\u201d Worrall said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have very serious challenges to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the future of funding for Helping Harvest and other food banks is uncertain, Worrall is looking forward and trying to remain optimistic.<\/p>\n

He pointed to the potential of\u00a0Helping Harvest\u2019s Community Kitchen<\/a> that opened in August in downtown Reading,\u00a0explaining that the kitchen makes it possible for large-scale food donations to be repurposed into thousands of individual meals for people in Berks and Schuylkill counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a real help in getting meals out to people who need them,\u201d Worrall said. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful how the community came together to support the Community Kitchen and make that possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Volunteers assemble ready-to-eat meals at Helping Harvest\u2019s new Community Kitchen.<\/p>\n

In these very uncertain times, Worrall will continue to look to the Berks and Schuylkill communities for support. It is urgent, he said, that the needs of everyone at risk for hunger \u2013 especially children \u2013 are addressed and met.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink what it would be like to not have enough food for your kids,\u201d Worrall said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine that, and I don\u2019t want anyone else to have to, either. We\u2019re going to need all the help we can get, but Helping Harvest will continue to serve the people who need us the most.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Susan Shelly McGovern for Berks County Community Foundation Pictured above: The Helping Harvest van provides a mobile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}