Summer’s The Time For ‘Helping Neighbors’

For visitors to the Cape, hunger generally means time for a clam roll, burgers on the grill or a fine dinner out. But for families who struggle to live and work here, hunger can mean not knowing where their next meal will come from, day after day.

The Family Pantry of Cape Cod helps by providing nutritious groceries to people struggling to make ends meet, and each summer, Cape Cod Chronicle readers give generously to help the Pantry carry out its mission.

Our Summertime Helping Neighbors campaign begins today, when we’ll begin running weekly stories about the Family Pantry, the people it helps and the volunteers who make it happen. The fund drive will continue through Labor Day, by which time we hope to have raised $90,000 together. Each week, we’ll also publish a list of donors and a running tally of our progress.

“This will be the eighth summer we’ve done Helping Neighbors, and generous summer readers have contributed just under $600,000 during that time,” Chronicle Publisher Henry C. Hyora said. “It makes us proud that our readers — even ones who are just here for summer vacation — dig deep to help put food on the table for local residents and workers,” he said. While the summertime campaign began in 2017, our annual holiday fundraiser for the Pantry has been a tradition since 2004. All told, Cape Cod Chronicle readers have given more than $1.8 million to the Family Pantry over those years.

“The summer people here, they take full advantage of beautiful Cape Cod. But there’s a whole lot of people that support that wonderful experience, and those are the people that we support,” Family Pantry Executive Director Christine Menard said. From hotel and restaurant staff to medical personnel, landscapers and retailers, lots of people rely on the Pantry to help take one bill off the table each month, maybe allowing them to pay the high cost of housing or transportation. “The reason that we started the summer campaign is to give the summer folks that are here the opportunity to support the Cape on a year-round basis,” she said.

“This year we have a $45,000 match that has come in partly from the Karen Campbell family in Chatham, and then there’s a bunch of other people that have given anonymously. So for every dollar that is donated to The Chronicle, you’re going to have a dollar-for-dollar match up to $45,000,” Menard said. Hence the $90,000 goal, which will be the most ambitious Summertime Helping Neighbors target yet.

Click here to donate now

or send a tax-deductible donation to The Family Pantry, 133 Queen Anne Rd., Harwich, MA 02645 (please write ” Helping Neighbors ” in the memo line), or call 508 432-6519 to learn about other ways to help.

Learn more about the hidden face of Hunger on the Lower Cape in this special video report: