Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home Gleaners recently received a $2,500 grant from the Siletz tribe to help purchase food, and the organization is continuing to expand its offerings for help to local families.
From the grant, the Gleaners will spend about $1,500 at Linn-Benton Food Share to buy dry foods with some frozen and refrigerated foods. The organization provides a meal a day for its workers and anyone who needs food as part of its mission statement, and the remainder will help pay for it.
The meal-a-day is held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The Gleaners are closed on Sundays now.
Wal-Mart also recently provided a $1,000 grant for meat to distribute to members.
In back of the Gleaners facility and thrift shop, located at 3031 Main St., the organization has added a community room, said co-coordinator Lisa Pye. The room contains a meeting table, along with computers, toys and a TV.
“We’re working on where we can have people do job searches and school work,” Pye said. Wi-Fi is already available for those who have laptops.
The room has an area where children can play or watch TV while parents are busy, she said. “We’re trying to be family friendly, and we encourage the kids to come in and help.”
Children 15 or older can run the register in the thrift store, and Pye wants to talk to high school officials about having students come in and learn to use a register and volunteer, providing experience and skills they can use when they look for jobs.
The Gleaners continue to participate in the JOBS program, and people can work their community service there as long as their crime was not violent or sex-related, Pye said.
The Gleaners have cleared out space throughout their building where donations had piled up prior to the election of new leaders in November. With bills also piling up, the previous leadership had closed the Gleaners’ doors in October.
Donations provide product to sell in the thrift shop, and they also provide items for its emergency clothing program, which provides three days worth of clothing, pajamas, shoes and a coat to member families once per year. Families also can take home dishes. Children also may receive a toy, and families can also take home blankets sometimes.
Donations have decreased since the opening of the Goodwill drop at the intersection of 18th and Main, Pye said. On the plus side, the Gleaners had a large overstock for quite awhile, and it took some time to get the items moved through its thrift store.
They are now taking donations of anything, Pye said. The only exception is beds, bed frames and mattresses, which they cannot take at all.
The Gleaners also have a washer and drier donation program, Pye said. What doesn’t work, they scrap for cash.
Donations are accepted until 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Cash donations are also accepted, Pye said, and they’re tax-deductible.
The Gleaners are specifically in need of a refrigerator for the kitchen because the old one died, Pye said.
The Gleaners were deeply in debt in November, more than $20,000, but they’ve worked their way out of most of it, Pye said. They still owe about $3,000 to two creditors.
The Gleaners have about 80 member families, up from around 40 in November, Pye said. Those families include 284 individuals. About half of the families are adoptees, which means they are physically or mentally incapable of volunteering for work at the Gleaners, although some can work part-time.
The Gleaners is open to families who are at or below 200 percent of the poverty level, $22,980 per year for a single person or $47,100 per year for families of four.
In exchange, members must work eight hours per month, in the shop or gleaning fields, where they harvest fields already harvested by farmers.
Harvesting machinery often leaves behind produce, and the Gleaners go behind the harvesters and finish harvesting the fields.
Once a week, members come to the store and put food into bags to take home, said Sue McIntire, co-coordinator. “It varies what we get in from the warehouse, but we try to get them nutritious meals each week.”
For more information, to volunteer, to join or to donate, contact the Gleaners at (541) 367-3190.