Long Island Cares pantries prepare to serve thousands during holiday season
Long Island Cares is expecting all of their pantries to see big increases as the holiday season continues.
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Long Island Cares food pantries served thousands during Thanksgiving. Now, they're preparing to serve thousands again during the rest of the holiday season.
Long Island Cares sent News 12 a breakdown of the number of families each of their pantries served last month:
Bethpage: 905
Freeport: 1,258
Hampton Bays: 564
Huntington Station: 605
Lindenhurst: 1,091
Valley Stream: 415
Long Island Cares is expecting all of their pantries to see big increases as the holiday season continues.
The Freeport pantry is expecting people to come in for holiday food in the next few days.
"We're expecting to be very busy but we are getting ready. There's a lot of food around, a lot of donations," says Reyna Felix, program coordinator for Nassau Center for Collaborative Assistance in Freeport. "They ask for chicken, ham, turkey, pork so we pretty much try to get everything in stock."
Katherine Fritz, president and CEO of Long Island Cares says the demand for food and help just keeps growing and many can be faced with tough decisions during the holiday season.
"As it gets closer to Christmas and people start thinking about giving gifts to their family, their kids, sometimes, once again, they're making a choice between can I give someone a gift or can I put food on my table?" says Fritz.
Vanessa Lopez takes her mother once a month to get food from the Long Island Cares pantry in Freeport. Today, they started getting a few things for the holidays.
"She gets a lot of stuff for the holidays. This is very helpful for her," says Lopez. "For the holidays, people want to be together but they also sometimes don't have enough food to feed everybody so this makes my mom comfortable to serve because she's got nine kids."
