Food Bank Helps Families Make Ends Meet

A little food bank wedged in a nondescript strip plaza helps thousands of Centreville and Chantilly residents who have fallen on hard times. 

, situated between a muffler shop and a hair salon in Sully Square, is a coordinated effort of local churches in Centreville, Clifton, Chantilly, Fair Oaks and Fairfax Station. It represents an outpost against poverty, offering free food from its pantry, emergency financial assistance, homelessness education, seasonal food baskets and a furniture ministry.

The ministries holds fundraising efforts all year and is in the middle of its annual Backpack Drive, collecting new backpacks for needy students in local elementary, middle and high schools, said Melissa Jansen, the group’s executive director. They can be dropped of at its Centreville location, 14631 Lee Highway #313, until Aug. 12. 

They generally re-distribute about 1,000 backpacks to 24 schools in the area, Jansen said. “Usually every year we are able to meet these requests because of generosity of our community,” Jansen said. “We go to our contacts at churches or local businesses.” 

The food pantry sees about 300 families a month and the ministries also provides extended help for the approximately 1,500 homeless men, women and children who are living in the community. 

What makes the work of the group even more impressive is that the face of poverty is not one readily recognizable in Fairfax County, the third richest county in the nation with a median household income of $104,259. Despite the robust local economy that is buffered from national fluctuations, the county has pockets of significant poverty. 

“I call them our invisible society,” said S.E. Nunamaker, of Herndon, a food pantry volunteer. “We may see a homeless guy walking down the street with a backpack, but do we really think about where he’s living, what he is eating?” 

“Once you open your eyes, that has a real impact on how you think about them,” Nunamaker said. 

Since January, there has been an increased demand for food from families in the Centreville area, Jansen said, with many coming from former middle-class households. 

“People move to Centreville with high ideals,” Jansen said, “but the reality is that they lost their jobs, can’t afford their housing or can’t afford their bills. We are in a good place to help these folks.” 

These are lean times for the food bank, which receives the bulk of its donations from the annual food drive held each year around Thanksgiving by the Boy Scouts. Local churches are holding food drives for their congregations during the summer and the ministries has its fellowship dinner set for Oct. 14 at the Fairview Park Marriott Hotel in Falls Church.