Resource Center has food, clothing, toys for needy

Kathleen Speck returned the phone to the receiver with a grimace and a decisive click. "We just spent all our money," she said as the day began recently at the Hilltowns Community Resource Center in Westerlo.

The Center, an agency of Albany diocesan Catholic Charities, isn't always in such dire circumstances, noted outreach worker Kathy Whitbeck. But due to the addition of 11 new families to the client roster this month and other growing needs, the annual food-buying budget was spent two months before the end of the year.

"We'll beg or borrow," said Ms. Speck, explaining how the Center will make do until 2004.

Simple setting

The Center occupies a small, white trailer home at the end of a curving gravel driveway, nudged between an elbow of slow-moving Basic Creek and a neighboring farm. Nervous or embarrassed clients can pull in front of the building and feel safe from the inquiring eyes of motorists on the road.

The situation is an improvement over the previous building, a decaying trailer with holes in the floor, no heat and a non-functional tap, Ms. Whitbeck said.

The two women are strapped for space, storing Christmas toys in closets and boxes of cleaning supplies in the bathtub. They pick their way through an explosion of cardboard boxes that hold stuffing, sweet potatoes, marshmallows, pink-and-white candy hearts, baby formula, diapers, instant oatmeal and vats of mayonnaise.

The goods won't be around long, explained Ms. Speck. The food will go either to the homes of clients or to the Center's other food pantry, located in a clapboard Protestant church in Knox.

Shopping list

Foodstuffs aren't the only items at the Center. Boys' jackets and pastel baby clothes can be found in cardboard boxes that will be packed into Ms. Speck's husband's van, which usually hauls sound equipment for his zydeco band.

"We're always accepting cleaning supplies, diapers, things that food stamps won't buy," she said.

More exotic donations can also turn up. Albany County International Airport recently called to look for children who have never been on a plane to participate in a fantasy flight. The airport will issue "tickets," board the children, taxi up and down the runway, and give them milk and cookies. Santa will be on board.

"I don't have enough kids to fill up a 737," Ms. Speck said, "but I know people who do." She passed the call to a Catholic Charities agency in Albany's South End.

Heat of the moment

Handing out needed goods is one activity at the Center. Getting people help is another, such as for a client who wonders if she is eligible for Niagara Mohawk's heating-bill coverage.

Her folder is filled with information: old bills, account numbers and evidence that the client also had trouble paying her bills last spring.

"We want to avoid this kind of reoccurrence," Ms. Speck explained, telling the client: "You're doing good -- absolutely. But you can do better."

Client list

For the most part, according to Ms. Speck, the families and individuals who come to the Center conform to the standards that New York Social Services uses -- with a few notable exceptions.

Because the Center does not fall under government regulations, it can accept clients who are a little over the income cutoff, families who need a little extra assistance, even though they wouldn't normally qualify for aid, she said.

They are "families that should be doing okay, but maybe somebody lost their job, or there has been a catastrophic illness, and they still have the mortgage to pay. They're using our services to get over the bumps in the road that they've been experiencing," she said. "We're from a community where we can know a little more about the families. We know if there's a situation."

Middle-women

The Center brokers other types of emergency assistance, which can be anything from paying a heating bill to shelling out $75 so a family can buy a dance/drill team uniform for their daughter.

It sends children to Camp Scully, gathers school supplies, recommends names of elderly people to the Albany Times Union for its Holiday Fund, runs the Hilltowns Blanket Project to benefit local sheep farmers, and has just begun to run a Time Dollar Bank -- a co-op system where participants exchange services without cost.

"These are people just living on the edge," Ms. Speck said. "It's amazing how some people survive. There are multiple layers of problems, and they're so overwhelmed with them that they're just frozen. We help them pick through the layers and get to the source."

(Contact the Hilltown Resource Center at 797-5256.)

(12/18/03) [[In-content Ad]]