Number of people relying on food pantries holds strong amid pandemic

As the Metro area begins returning to some sense of normal food pantries continue to see record numbers amid the pandemic, and it’s taking some pretty extraordinary efforts to keep people fed.

The women’s guild at St. Wenceslaus Church in West Omaha has stepped up big time to help with donations.

“We had the power with eight of us to spring into action,” said Anne Thomsen of the Women’s Guild. “We have an email list of 700 to 800 people that we could tap into.”

But the reach didn’t stop there; instead of extending to the church’s three-thousand members.

“Father Tom said, ‘let’s use all of the parishioners and we’ll experiment with it for a week’, and we went to two weekends and the results were astounding,” said Thomsen.

Astounding enough help the St. Vincent De Paul Food Pantry meet the soaring need.

“We’re currently serving about 130 to 150 households per day,” said Jerry Brocky, manager of the pantry. “It’s basically like a busy Tuesday before Thanksgiving every day we’re open.”

And nobody expects this new need to change anytime soon, making donations critical.

“Without Saint Wenceslaus, I’m not saying our pantry couldn’t run, but for years they’ve helped us monthly,” said Brocky, noting the church as upped deliveries to roughly twice a month since the pandemic.

“A couple of weeks ago they delivered three pickup truck loads of food and that supplied us for a week or so,” said Brocky.

St. Vincent De Paul says they’ll take all the help they can get; encouraging people to launch their own food collections

“If you want to hold a drive for us in the future, that would be a great help to us as we serve the Omaha community,” said Brocky.

If you are interested in starting up food drive you can contact

and they’ll connect to the food pantry.