A service stalwart to Baltimore’s poor and homeless for 26 years, Our Daily Bread, which on Oct. 16 marked its 10,000th consecutive day of serving hot meals to the hungry, may have to tighten its belt.
“We are seeing an increase in clients of about 100 more a day over the 700 we normally serve,” said Kerrie Burch-Deluca, director of communications for the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. “We also have decreased donations and a decrease in casseroles donated. Last month we were down about 480 casseroles. It’s sort of a perfect storm.”
The archdiocesan charity, which Burch-Deluca said also acts as a career center for local residents, serves about 250,000 hot meals a year and receives about $500,000 in donations for program funding.
So far this year, however, donations are down $100,000, and in October, instead of getting the usual 3,000 donated casseroles from area churches and supporters, only about 2,600 turned up.
Burch-Deluca also said that the number of people seeking free career counseling services at the center has almost doubled.
“We take enough chicken in to feed hopefully all the people that come that day,” said Mary Agnes Lewis, a St. Louis Catholic Church in Clarksville parishioner and coordinator of its Our Daily Bread food donations for 25 years. “Different parishes do this once a month.
Our day is Thursday.” Lewis said she hasn’t noticed any decrease from her donors.
Chicken dinners and other main courses supplement the casseroles.
“We have about 60 different contributing churches,” said Dennis Murphy, Our Daily Bread’s program manager, “and all of them came in a little short. At the end of the month we were about 400 short.”
Though concerned about the funding challenge, Murphy said he believed the Catholic Charities outreach would weather the storm.
“Our concern is that the current economic situation has affected people in a way that they are having trouble helping us help the folks most in need. So we’re asking people to dig as deep as they can to help us.”
Burch-Deluca, too, was upbeat.
“The economy is really hitting us hard,” she said. “So far we are keeping up and have a whole cadre of loyal, generous donors we know will be there for us. But we’re putting out a call for help for funding. And if others would like to make a casserole or two, that would be wonderful too.”
Our Daily Bread
725 Fallsway
Baltimore, MD 21202
443-986-9027; www.cc-md.org
