hunger and food insecurity are a problem for around 750,000 residents in New Jersey each year and those needs are only heightened around the holidays as the cost of basic needs are coupled with the added costs of the season but while many of us focus on the hungry during this time food banks and pantries around the state work to meet those needs day in and day out as part of our ongoing series hunger in New Jersey Melissa Rose Cooper spoke with a few of them to better understand how great the need for food support in the state really is we do dairy cheese um milk um eggs um we do proteins chicken beef pork fish shrimp sometimes if our suppliers have it uh but most of the time it's uh canned goods dry good stuff like rice pastas uh canned vegetables sometimes frozen vegetables just some of the items available at this Community Food Pantry in Newark known as Champion house number two the United Community Comm Corporation opened this location on South 18th Street earlier this year after executive director Craig mayor says they noticed aise in food insecurity the pandemic kind of wiped away some of the the the the dust or the the the confusion on who actually needs and then so we started to see different faces different demographics um especially when the city uh shut down and uh people were weren't able to kind of travel and go to work um we started seeing people with um a a higher level of income coming in because of the uncertainty of putting food on their own table and Rising inflation leading to higher costs for everyday Necessities like rent and groceries not making it any easier for many families it's hard to get an exact number but around 3/4 of a million people in the state of New Jersey who are food insecure Elizabeth McCarthy is the CEO and president for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey which distributes over a 100 million pounds of food a year to those 750,000 people she says while the holiday season tends to shed light on the need for giving food insecurity is an issue facing families all year round so the organization is also focused on addressing the root causes of hunger um so we have several job training programs um culinary as well as Warehouse training um to really try to get people into the workforce who aren't or give them sort of um some skills to be able to increase their wages over time get jobs with benefits we also spend a lot of time educating people about benefits for which they're eligible so many people are eligible for SNAP used to be food stamps it's now called snap um who don't know they're eligible or who don't know how to apply uh so we actually go out we have a mobile unit that goes or we partner with other organizations and send people to do Hands-On assistance to get people to help applying um we have programs in schools for after school programs during the year and then in summer programs um to feed children there uh and send home food to families that need it also we know that if a child's food insecure probably the family needs help also so we have family packs that we send home for the weekend um really trying to attack it from many different places getting people back on their feet is also an important goal for the United Community corporation's Pantry we want to know why they've come and how we can help them not come again and so uh a lot of times it's um you know changes in jobs maybe hours were cut maybe someone got laid off in the household and then they want to make sure that they can fill the refrigerator so that it's a coverage for them and their family during that time and so uh people depend on these supplements and we're not giving out enough food to feed the whole family for the whole week but we're trying United Community corporation's pantry is open six days a week but the organization also provides several Community fridges across the city where residents can access food 24 hours a day for NJ Spotlight news I'm Melissa Rose Cooper [Music]