New Haven Independent

Several key players have logged more than two decades in the trenches.

Nancy Carrington (pictured), the executive director of the food bank, which serves six of the state’s eight counties, joined the agency in 1984. She is completing a quarter century of taking in food by the ton and sending it out to dozens of local groups that get the food to those in need.

This iconic batch — purported to include that 200 millionth pound — went to Christian Community Action. That was fitting. CCA was involved in the start-up of the food bank 27 years ago, when a volunteer from the Community Soup Kitchen borrowed a desk and a phone and set to work organizing a central repository for donated food.

“In that first year, we distributed 50,000 pounds of food, and that seemed pretty phenomenal,” Carrington said. “And this year we’re on a trajectory to distribute some 18 million pounds of food.” She said the 200 million pounds translates into 154 million meals.

“As much as I’m proud that we’re able to provide all this food and this help to so many people, it’s sobering that there are that many people who are in need, and to know that despite what we do this year, it doesn’t look like every single person who is hungry is going to be fed.”

In accepting the food, CCA Executive Director Bonita Grubbs (pictured) joked that CCA provided a desk and a phone, “and even a chair” to the fledgling effort. She’s captained her agency for more than two decades, providing food to 1,500 families, emergency shelter, transitional housing and staffing for organizing efforts among clients and former clients, like Mothers for Justice. “We are grateful for the ongoing collaboration that we have,” she said. “We couldn’t do what we’ve done over the years without the aid of the food bank.”

The boxes and bags of food heading from the food bank’s East Haven warehouse to CCA constituted the usual “grab bag,” as Carrington called it. The delivery included a big box of apples, a huge mesh bag of onions, cans of beans, canned fruit, cartons of milk, and peanut butter, as well as some less healthful items like cans of soda and boxes of buttery toffee.

Heading down the conveyor belt (pictured at top of story) and out the door right before CCA’s order were these boxes en route to the Community Soup Kitchen — founded in 1977 and the first feeding operation of its kind in New Haven —- where David O’Sullivan has been the coordinator for most of those years. He was also on hand for the momentous event.

U.S. Rosa DeLauro (pictured), chairwoman of the Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee, has been instrumental in increasing funding in Congress for feeding programs. She said her goal is to increase access for more needy people, especially children, though expanding access to school breakfast and lunch and the after-school supper program, by raising the income eligibility cut-off for free meals to 185 percent of the poverty level, and by improving the nutrition profile of school meals.

“The changes are not cheap,” she said, “but we make a smart investment when we invest in our kids.” She also made a pitch for more food aid for poor people in other countries. “While we fight for these improvements to child nutrition, I’m heartened to know that the food bank is here on the ground helping to do what needs to get done.”