How Helping Hand is feeding Dunklin County's seniors and families in crisis

KENNETT — Helping Hand, an income-based food pantry and thrift store on Frisco Street was busier than normal for a Tuesday this week.

Director Timothy Cox and a number of male volunteers were outside the bustling facility, standing in the chill of January weather under a cloudless, blue sky near a dirt and chat driveway and an ever-present parade of vehicles.

Older people driving cars and pickup trucks waited patiently for boxes of food while Cox attended to a clipboard of documents and volunteers filled the orders he approved.

They loaded cardboard boxes of food into the vehicles that followed one another singly in procession, thanked the drivers, wished them a pleasant afternoon and continued working through their days.

“This is our monthly Senior Food Box program,” Cox said. “We do this through the SEMO Food Bank from Sikeston.”

“That’s supported through the USDA,” the director added, reviewing another document on his clipboard, then checking off another box of food as it was loaded into a silver pickup truck.

“Some of the food is food that we’ve purchased,” he said. “And some is food that is sent from USDA through our TEFAP (the federal government’s Emergency Food Assistance Program) endeavor.

“But today and for the next couple of days, we do Senior Box distribution as our primary objective in the mornings. Three days every month. Then we serve people with Helping Hand food boxes in the afternoons.”

The food pantry is well-known in the area, and for good reason. Earlier this year, the Delta Dunklin Democrat recognized the non-profit as its Difference Maker Charity of the Year, and SEMO Food Bank named Helping Hand its 2024 Agency of the Year.

“We almost always do the Senior Boxes in mid-month,” Cox explained. “We carve out several days during the week to get that done.”

Cox explained that to qualify for Senior Food Boxes, seniors must be 60 or older and residents of Dunklin County.

“We have 330 seniors served by the program, and another 95 people are on the waiting list,” he said. “There is an income guideline, but the short answer is to come in and fill out an application, and then we’ll notify you of the qualifications, the parameters of the program.”

Cox enjoys enhancing lives with good food, especially for people who, for whatever reason, fall through the economic cracks and need occasional nutritional help.

He hasn’t always been involved with non-profits. About a year ago, Cox left his transportation logs in a big rig and found employment at the pantry by accident.

Some say, and he agrees, it’s a blessing.

A very large, very satisfying blessing.

“I’ve been here since last February,” he said. “My wife contracted multiple sclerosis, so I had to embark on a career change. I ended my transportation career, came in off the road as a truck driver and just happened to fall into this.

“It’s my first time to work for a non-profit. And it’s amazing.”

Cox said the plethora of resources and staggering numbers of organizations “that work together in this community to make the program successful” is just incredible.

“You really don’t understand it until you’re in the middle of it,” Cox said. “From the top of the county all the way down to the most southern edge. We see many of the same faces every month.”

The program is seeing new faces now that TEFAP is operating.

“It’s a little different than our senior program,” he said. “TEFAP helps out families in crisis in terms of food. There is an income guideline that’s actually pretty high for this area. So, almost everybody that comes in qualifies for help. It’s based on family sizes and it’s a box we give out once a month.”

Helping Hand has more than 800 names stored in its files and that number grows every month, Cox said.

“We want it to grow,” he admitted. “We want to try and meet as many people and families as we can.”

An uptick in the number of those who become vulnerable nutritionally increases the need for volunteers and services, Cox said.

And Helping Hand is there to provide services, he emphasized.

“The need has been met,” he said, smiling. “We’ve been blessed.

“The items change,” he added. “But the primary need and what we needed to accomplish has been met. That’s from great community support and the SEMO Food Bank.”

Helping Hand is available at 511 Frisco St., Kennett, and is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Call 573-888-9048 for more information.