The Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative cannot fulfill its mission to alleviate food insecurity in Whitehall and Coplay without our dedicated volunteers.

We opened our WCHI Food Pantry, located in the former Christ the King School at the St. John the Baptist Church complex, 3024 S. Ruch St., Whitehall. Because of COVID-19, WCHI had its first pantry food distribution outside in the church parking lot Jan. 14, 2021, with two lines of cars coming through.

Our WCHI pantry attendance is growing by leaps and bounds. To accommodate this growth, WCHI needs more volunteers for our pantry and our garden, where fresh vegetables are planted, grown and harvested for pantry guests.

WCHI is also forming a committee to help new volunteers navigate their way through the required clearances. Many residents want to volunteer but do not have or know how to use a computer.

We have several state-required clearances, which can seem overwhelming but really are not hard to complete. We also have one-page, simple read-and-sign clearances. The FBI criminal background fingerprint check is mandatory, and WCHI does reimburse the $15 charge.

All clearances usually can be completed in less than two weeks. Everyone goes at their own pace, and there is no time frame to complete these clearances. A list of required clearances can be found at tinyurl.com/WCHIforms.

Once approved, you can volunteer as much or as little as you like. Sylvia Lee, our volunteer coordinator, emails volunteer opportunities to every cleared volunteer. The volunteer then selects the activities they want to do.

Contact her at volunteerme.lee@gmail.com with any questions. Sign up at tinyurl.com/WCHIvolunteer to let her know you are interested in volunteering. If you don’t have a computer, call us at 484-225-0358.

Some behind-the-scenes volunteer activities throughout the month include unloading our WCHI or volunteer vehicles filled with food and toiletry products and bringing them inside the pantry. These items then get carried by hand into the pantry, put on rolling racks and sent to their dedicated areas in the pantry. These items are loaded onto skids or rolling racks and marked state and USDA food or general donations from the public. Then the inventory is stocked on appropriate racks for our guests to choose from during distribution days.

On pantry distribution days, our volunteers do specific jobs, including welcoming our guests as they arrive; registering our guests; shopping with our guests throughout the pantry; providing fresh produce from our WCHI garden, along with any produce available from Second Harvest Food Bank and grown by Whitehall and Coplay residents in their personal gardens; providing dog and cat food when available; and unloading the bagged or boxed items from our shopping carts into our guests’ cars.

With food and gas prices still rising, our Whitehall and Coplay low-income residents are utilizing our pantry more and more. We are pleased. No one should be hungry in Whitehall or Coplay. Keep telling your family, friends and co-workers about us. WCHI and our volunteers are here to help.

The busiest day we have on record is Sept. 14, and we expect to keep growing. We are open the second and third Thursdays of the month.

We served 151 households Sept. 14, which consisted of 213 children, 268 adults and 129 seniors for a total of 610 people. To compare, WCHI served 136 households Aug. 19, which consisted of 210 children, 243 adults and 119 seniors for a total of 572 people. This is a 10% increase in household attendance and an increase of 38 people, or a 7% increase.

Our second distribution is Sept. 21.

WCHI and I sincerely thank all our selfless volunteers who prepared for and/or helped Sept. 14. We also thank the 10 additional student volunteers from WCSD’s Serve Club who helped us for the evening shift.

Note, the above pantry numbers were just one day. Not every registered household attends our pantry distribution monthly. Many more are scheduled and then are called into work, are sick or have no transportation. If everyone did attend monthly, we would be serving closer to 1,200 people or more a month.

Please seriously consider volunteering with WCHI. We are like a family, and everyone gets along very well.