Article courtesy of Peter Currier, The Sun News. For the full article please visit: https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/11/09/mvfb-emergency-food-drive-sees-significant-support-amid-snap-cutoff/
LOWELL — The rapidly approaching holiday season tends to be the busiest part of the year for agencies and nonprofits that deal with food assistance, but compounding factors like the ongoing government shutdown and the cutoff of food assistance benefits has sparked an early scramble to gather donations this year.
Merrimack Valley Food Bank Program Director Roberta Emerson has lived her whole life in Greater Lowell. If there is one thing she can say about the people in the region, it is that “everybody comes together” in times of crisis.
“We have had food donations, the phone has been ringing off the hook. Everything is, ‘What can I do? When can I come by? Where can I donate?’” said Emerson. “We live in such a great community that when the chips are down, everybody comes up and rises above and does what they can to help everybody in need.”
The mission of getting food to people in need is certainly not a new one for the MVFB, but with the country now in the longest government shutdown in its history, and benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cut off last week for millions of Americans, the demand for food assistance spiked significantly. This prompted the MVFB to partner with the city of Lowell, Merrimack Valley Central Labor Council, Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce, Revolutionary Valley, Rockland Trust and state Reps. Tara Hong, Rodney Elliott and Vanna Howard to organize an emergency food drive over the last week, culminating in a drop-off day Saturday at the MVFB warehouse.
The food bank typically does not distribute food directly to the people in need, but instead sends it to its more than 100 partner agencies in and around Greater Lowell to distribute directly.
The response to the emergency food drive has been significant, Emerson said, with people showing up constantly throughout the week to drop off food at the warehouse in addition to the other drop-off locations that were designated throughout the area. As positive as the response has been, though, she said the consequences of SNAP benefits being shut off have been exactly what food assistance agencies feared before they went into effect.
“I run programs for the seniors and the children. Our numbers for our children’s feeding program, some of them have doubled,” said Emerson. “When a school typically gets 100 bags to send home, they are now up to 200 bags.”
While the MVFB has been getting plenty of calls from people looking to donate, they are also getting many from people scared about where they can get food without access to their SNAP benefits, Emerson said.
The drop-off day for the emergency food drive took place the day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a pause to a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island that would have required the government to pay $4 billion from an emergency fund to continue SNAP payments after an appeal by President Trump. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, some SNAP recipients in Massachusetts were given access to their benefits Friday and Saturday after a directive from Gov. Maura Healey.
“We don’t know what is going to happen with the rest of this month’s benefits. If the rest of the benefits do get paid out, we don’t know what happens in December,” MVFB Communications and Public Relations Director Kelly Proulx said Saturday. “There is a fear that a month from now, we are going to be right back here again trying to figure out what to do with people.”
With Thanksgiving approaching, Proulx said the SNAP shutoff has been “really overwhelming” for MVFB’s partner agencies and their own staff.
“How do we make the most of the resources we have while knowing we don’t have the resources to make up for the gap that SNAP leaves behind?” said Proulx.
The response from the food drive has nonetheless been really good, Proulx said, with drop-off locations requesting more bins after their own were filled up with donations. She said a final total for the overall weight of donations will likely not be available until early this week, and that they have also been receiving financial donations they can use to purchase more food in bulk.
If the SNAP cutoff continues, Proulx said the concern is that MVFB and other similar organizations will be trying to fill “a bigger gap” in food insecurity than they even saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That was the highest level of food insecurity we had encountered up to that point, but we are talking about over a million people in this state who rely on those SNAP benefits,” said Proulx.
Among those volunteering at the MVFB Saturday was YouthBuild Culinary Program Supervisor Anna Jabar. YouthBuild is a workforce development program of Community Teamwork Inc.
Jabar was there with two graduates of YouthBuild’s Peer Mentor program, Arianna Pacheco, 18, and Jeremiah Maldonado, 16, both of Lowell.
“The food bank has been really instrumental with our culinary program especially. When we first started our culinary program, anything we cooked for our students came from the food bank,” said Jabar. “One of the things we do in the culinary program is feed our whole school every day, so we feed 40 to 50 students five days a week.”
YouthBuild also operates its own food pantry, to which the MVFB also helps contribute. With the SNAP cutoff, Jabar said they are planning for “a huge impact” among their students, most of whom she said have dropped out of high school or have challenging home lives.
“We really try to treat the whole family, so food is No. 1 in that equation for kids,” said Jabar.
Middlesex Community College Coordinator for Essential Needs and Community Resources Jonathan Crockett was also at the food bank, helping unload donations from bins to the shelves of the food pantry room. Crocket coordinates MCC’s two food pantries, with one each on the Lowell and Bedford campuses.
Since the SNAP benefit cutoff, Crockett said MCC has seen a lot of students “really anxious and scared about the impacts.”
“Just in the last week we’ve seen a significant increase, almost doubling of the foot traffic in our food pantries on campus. We are trying to be responsive in giving Market Basket gift cards to students,” said Crockett, noting an uptick in donations to those pantries from the community. “We are trying to keep up with the demand, but there has been a lot of emotional concern from students and a lot more students trying to access those resources.”
On Monday, Crockett said MCC sent a survey out to all 8,000 of its students to assess the impact from the SNAP cutoff among the student body.
“We know anecdotally, many, many of our students struggle financially, a majority of our students are [Pell Grant] eligible,” said Crockett.
Still, Crockett said the response on campus has been “heartwarming.”
“In the last week on campus I’ve had so many faculty and staff reach out to ask ‘How can I help?’” said Crockett.
On the other side of the warehouse was a group of volunteers from the Greater Lowell YMCA, and among them was CEO Kevin Morrissey.
“It is a valuable resource for the community, especially during these times,” said Morrissey.
The YMCA partners with the MVFB to do a weekly food pantry, Morrissey said, and during the SNAP cutoff he said they thought it would be a good act of community service to come and prepare bags of food to give out themselves.
Among those who provided financial support was the Markley Group, who donated $25,000 for the emergency food drive.
“The Markley Group is proud to support the Merrimack Valley Food Bank’s emergency food drive to help families in need across Lowell during these difficult times,” the company said in a written statement to The Sun.