Yorkville Common Pantry volunteers and staff restock shelves for the next day's distribution. (Photo by Nate Rawlings)

Outside the pantry, a few minutes before the doors would open, Carlos Dominguez, 20, waited in line with 20 other. It was his third visit to the pantry within a week. He talked about why he came.

“Somebody told me, a couple of my friends. I come with three or four of them,” Dominguez said. “People come here to eat every day. I don’t have much money, and the food is free.“ He said the economy has hurt his business as a handyman and jack of all trades. “I’m a car mechanic for BMWs, Volkswagens, Toyotas, I paint, I make keys,” he said.

Dominguez has tried another free food pantry, although he couldn’t remember its name. He prefers Yorkville’s pantry because it offers so many different kinds of foods and services. “You can brush your teeth, wash your clothes,” he said. “There’s a lot of food—like every kind of food. I like the fruit, some oranges, apple juice.”

He described his favorite meal. “The one with the chicken, the rice, the beans and potatoes with cheese,” he said. “It’s real good.”

—Sam Petulla

The Yorkville Common Pantry, the city’s largest community pantry, provides food to more than 7,000 households. Clients receive weekly packages containing nine planned meals– three a day for three days – and usually purchase additional meals with food stamps.

The average client family used to visit the pantry 1.5 times per month, according to Daniel Reyes, the pantry’s program director. That number increased to 3.85 times per month at the recession’s height, but has fallen back to 3.2 times per month.

“The year before last, we saw a spike in the number of new clients,” Reyes says. “Low end workers lost their jobs at a greater rate than others.”

More than a million New York City residents require emergency food at least once a year, according to a study by City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City. More than a third of those residents will have to choose between buying food and paying rent. And that report was released in 2006, when national unemployment was 4.6 percent. It’s now 10.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So at the Yorkville pantry, where volunteers are preparing invitations for the big annual fundraiser, there are no plans for a black tie gala, theater excursion or cocktail party. This year, the pantry is asking its supporters to stay home and mail checks.

“In this climate, we didn’t feel it was right to have an event,” says Stephen Grimaldi, the pantry’s executive director. “This year we’re having a non-event event. Don’t rent a tux, go to the dry cleaners- –spend your money on yourself, and a little bit on us too.”

In the lingering economic downturn, organizations that feed the hungry are facing a two-sided crunch. As unemployment rises, more people need their services, but the corporations that traditionally support them have suffered large losses and contributed less money.

“It has dried up — more than a bit,” Grimaldi says of corporate donations. Since government funds only account for 13 percent of the pantry’s operating budget, private and corporate donations must cover the cost of feeding the hungry in Harlem.

Over the past three years, as Stein notes, the number of clients who come to the Yorkville Common Pantry has increased dramatically. In 2007, the pantry served 1.4 million meals, which rose to 1.7 million in 2008. This year, the pantry has served more than 2 million meals, 1.9 million of which were pantry food packages.

“Hunger’s on the front page, and it should be,” Grimaldi says. “People who didn’t traditionally need meal programs are coming.”

Such challenges have affected the vast majority of the city’s food assistance programs. Nearly 93 percent of emergency food sites saw an increase in first-time clients; more than half saw a greater than 25 percent increase, according to another report by the Food Bank of New York City.

The Food Bank, which is the city’s largest hunger relief organization and contributes food to nearly 1,000 assistance programs, including the Yorkville Common Pantry, had difficulty meeting the higher demand early in the recession. Almost 70 percent of its emergency food sites reported reducing the amount of food given to each family, 28 percent reduced distribution hours and days, and more than half reported having to turn away individuals for lack of food, according to its 2009 report, “NYC Hunger Experience: A Year in Recession.”

The Food Bank used several tax changes and increased unemployment benefits to enroll more eligible families in food stamp programs and turn away fewer clients. But these maneuvers have been temporary solutions, and the Food Bank is seeking more sustainable ways to serve the growing need.

“Last year’s response, however successful, was temporary, and leaves us with a tremendous gap in resources,” Food Bank President and CEO Lucy Cabrera said in a statement. “Only sustainable solutions will drive down food poverty.”

The Yorkville Common Pantry has never had to turn away any client for lack of food, according to Reyes. “Granted, the packages aren’t as full as they used to be,” says Reyes. “When we see a large intake of new people, it’s usually from a pantry that’s shut down or turned them away. We get them processed quickly and make sure they get a meal package.”

Though Yorkville Common Pantry serves anyone in the city through its hot meal program, which allows people to receive a single meal when they’re in great need, the core of its service is the pantry program. Individuals and families in 12 Manhattan zip codes can register to receive free groceries weekly. Seven of those 12 are in Harlem.

Candice Frawley has served as a volunteer since 2002, and chairs the pantry’s development committee. “My background, unfortunately, is professional fundraising,” Frawley says. “But I’d rather be stuffing boxes.”

Her dual role in the pantry’s operations has allowed Frawley to see donations ebbing during the recession.

“Last year was the toughest, but people have still been generous,” Frawley says. “Lots of corporations donate time through volunteer days and gifts in kind. It actually started getting tighter in the 90’s because of mergers and acquisitions. We might have three banks all donating, then they merge into one bank.”

Though corporate donations account for part of the pantry’s funding, Frawley says it has never relied on large donations for the weekly food distribution. “Thank goodness we weren’t heavily reliant on those that ran into problems when the you-know-what hit the fan last fall,” she says.

In the midst of the slowdown in funding and the increase in clients, the pantry has expanded its services for the most needy New Yorkers.

Its basement serves a variety of purposes: Homeless people living on streets or in shelters can use its showers and laundry machines. A counselor works with homeless clients to find them more permanent help. On Saturdays, the basement becomes a classroom where volunteers teach cooking and nutrition classes for adults and children, emphasizing a healthy lifestyle. Once a week, a volunteer barber gives free haircuts. “Food is the primary object, but it’s an engagement tool for other things,” Grimaldi says.

For instance, the pantry recently added a program, with the city’s human resources department and its housing authority, to help clients file electronic food stamp applications. Clients can bring their paperwork to the pantry, where a staffer will prepare an online form, so that clients don’t have to trek to another office for food stamps. This year, more than 500 people have received food stamps through this program. “That’s $1 million back into this Harlem community,” Grimaldi says.

To support such services, Grimaldi and his staff have found creative ways to cut costs while actually increasing service.

“We’ve cut every possible expense,” Grimaldi says. “Everything from turning off the lights to negotiating gas and electric rates, buying early at a locked in rate.”

The pantry operates with a staff of only 19 paid employees; volunteers provide 63 percent of the labor.

Roland Woodland, directing clients to the exit after they receive their food, began volunteering at the pantry when he retired after teaching special education in Harlem for 27 years. He has gotten to know many of the clients, but cautions “you have to keep it professional. No one can have more peanut butter or bags than anyone else. You have to treat everyone the same.”

The pantry recently received an award from the Robin Hood Foundation that included a $50,000 grant to continue servicing Harlem’s hungry. “We’re a professional organization with a professional manager,” Stein says. “You will much more directly help the needy by giving to the YCP rather than to a city-wide organization or a smaller one that doesn’t feature the professionalism, client relationship and case management we have.”

Before moving on to administrative tasks, the volunteers leave the shelves stocked for the next day, when clients will line up for food packages again.

African-American and Hispanic households, the majority uptown, lack basic financial education and services. (Graph by Tim Kiladze. Source: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2009)

On a sunny autumn Friday, Bader Bahmad and fellow members of a financial education seminar at the Fort Washington Public Library branch were discussing rudimentary principles, such as the difference between needs and wants.

In a run-down conference room on the library’s deserted second floor, they talked about saving money. Asked to give examples of items they should save for, one woman mentioned a $7.99 blouse she saw earlier in the week and another said a pack of cigarettes. A talkative blonde said she has never saved for anything.

Cheryl Hines of Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension community program led the discussion. She provided handouts that explained the difference between short, medium and long-term savings goals; she offered tips for tracking money, like using a notebook to record expenditures.

Bahmad, 39, found the seminar a bit basic, but she liked the reminders because she and her three children are supported solely by her husband’s earnings as a taxi driver. She strictly limits spending on discretionary goods. “In every hour of the day, if I don’t need it, I’m not doing it,” Bahmad said.

Badmad’s struggle is complicated. In Washington Heights where she lives, families are lucky to have a bank account. While 12 percent of Manhattan households don’t have a standard checking account, 25 percent of African Americans and 27 percent of Hispanics in Manhattan – the majority populations uptown – live unbanked, according to a survey last year by Pew Charitable Trusts. In effect, they pay an average $1,042 annually in check cashing fees.

Bahmad has been trying to make ends meet in the U.S. for close to 15 years. An immigrant from Lebanon, she used to sew scarves and dresses for stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan. When she returned to her home country three years ago to be closer to her family, leaving her husband behind in New York, she sold her sewing machines.

But the distance strained her marriage, and Bahmad returned to New York after two years. “Here you’re missing something, over there you’re missing something,” she said.

Now back in America without a job, Bahmad is looking for financial advice. As a start, she attended the free seminar at the Public Library.

Instructor Milly DuBouchet, who teaches similar classes in Washington Heights, finds it hard to address intricate financial problems because her audience has never had the means to save money. “It’s hard for them to save 10 percent of their income monthly when they can’t necessarily pay their phone bill every month,” she said. “Financial literacy is at a bare minimum in our community.”

To help, the Bloomberg administration created the Office of Financial Empowerment, where DuBouchet also works. It offers personal finance workshops and free private counseling.

Lower-income people may lack a basic understanding of credit ratings and the principles of debt, according to DuBouchet. Many of her clients have been denied loans and “they want to see why,” she said. Moreover, “A lot of people consider credit cards quote unquote free money.” She tries to tell her seminar members and private clients how FICO scores are compiled and reminds those in debt, “If you stop paying it, they don’t forget about you.”

Workshops offering basic financial information can be found all over upper Manhattan. Friends Jenny Gil and Angela Ariza attended one specifically for women at City College. Both women, immigrants from Colombia, readily admit they know little about personal finance.

Gil, 27, is lucky to have less than $5,000 in debt, which she described as “not impossible.” She works in a restaurant office and is trying to repay what she owes so that she can start saving and investing – only she doesn’t know how.

She blames her financial illiteracy on Colombian cultural norms. She was raised with the belief that women don’t handle finances because they are too complex. “It’s the new days and now women take care of their own business,” she said.

Gil has done some reading on her own, like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, but still has trouble grasping certain fundamental financial concepts. To remedy the problem, she thinks personal finances should become part of the high school curriculum.

Donny Lynn Burton agrees. A vice president at the Harlem office of the non-profit Operation Hope, which offers seminars in credit and money management as well as individual credit counseling, she constantly meets people in similar situations.
Her clients live very differently from the middle class. “They live paycheck to paycheck,” Burton said. “They don’t understand the benefits of having an account” in a bank. She shows them how to create budgets and has them come in regularly to stay on track.

But often they start much too late, which she blames on pride. It frustrates her that most people in foreclosure know what lies ahead but don’t take action. ‘They never try to call their bank to work something out,” Burton said. She spends a lot of time assuring her clients that they can negotiate because the bank is better off if they stay in their homes.

She, too, would like to see financial education begin in high school, before people wade into major financial decisions.

Kevin Walters owns Creole Restaurant in East Harlem. He wants help with growth so he enrolled in a free, specialized small business program at Columbia Business School. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

After years of impressing his bosses at financial institutions, Neil Caesar said he was “used to being a superstar.”

Then he left the corporate world, where he worked under established business plans, to run a small business, where he has minimal structure.

Caesar is now the chief financial officer and general manager of Digiwaxx LLC, a Harlem-based music marketing and promotions agency founded in 1998. Despite success in such corporations as State Farm and MetLife, where career progression follows a defined path, Caesar admits that he was ill prepared to be an entrepreneur. “You get in this environment and there’s not a lot of training for it,” he says, adding that he doesn’t have an experienced boss to consult for difficult decisions.

To help people like Caesar, professors and administrators at Columbia Business School last year created the Columbia Community Business Program.

It’s run out of the school’s Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center and provides a group of small businesses in upper Manhattan with free advice from both professionals at the school and a seasoned small business coach. The group meets 10 times a year but has unlimited access to Columbia’s professors who can connect participants to professionals in other faculties, like law and engineering.

The participants include 11 businesses and one not-for-profit organization that have been around for at least three years and bring in annual revenues of at least $250,000. This peer group represents one of the program’s key features; typically, business schools deploy their relatively inexperienced students into communities to work with organizations that need business advice. In this program, participants learn from peers going through similar problems and are in constant communication with seasoned professors.

Each of the organizations agreed to a two-year commitment. For Caesar, this requirement was one of the biggest lures. “It forced me to carve out time and drill down on how I’m going to improve the business,” he said.

For participants, like Princess Jenkins, the minimum annual revenue was a major attraction. Jenkins owns the Brownstone, a clothing and accessories store on 125th Street just east of Fifth Avenue. The Brownstone has been around for 10 years and is well known in Harlem, but Jenkins wants help “growing the business and taking it to the next level.” She runs the store by herself (she used to have two business partners), and is trying to launch a mail-order catalogue.

Jenkins treats everyone who enters the store like a friend, ending many of her sentences with “baby” – “thank you, baby,” “told you, baby.” She is well connected in the community, but her network lacked people running businesses of the same size, making it hard to find advice.

“A lot of the time, small business development information is developed toward startups or businesses making over a million,” she said. While she has cleared the hurdles new businesses face, she can’t yet relate to big firms’ problems.

Princess Jenkins owns The Brownstone on 125th Street in Harlem. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

She applied to the program after hearing about it at a Harlem Business Alliance meeting. Entering with almost no expectations, she simply assumed that she would learn a great deal because of the business school’s reputation.

Looking back on the project’s first year, marked by the greatest economic disruption since the Great Depression, Jenkins acknowledges that she learned a lot – particularly such small, concrete skills as online social networking.

A year ago, the Brownstone wasn’t on Facebook. The program changed that. It also set her up with Google Analytics, which allows her to track who visits her web site and how often, and connected her with Columbia engineering students who will help improve the Brownstone’s search engine results.

Jenkins also praises Columbia’s flexibility. “They’re not trying to give you a road map for success,” she said. “They’re saying, ‘What’s your map and how do we get there?’”

Kevin Walters owns Creole Restaurant in East Harlem; he has spent the past few years finding nightly entertainment and connecting with local artists exhibited in the restaurant, and is only now focusing on promotion.

Aside from learning from his peers, who run the gamut in age, gender and ethnicity, Walters is particularly appreciative of working with the business coach, Barbara Roberts.

“She has academic training,” he says. “She also has tons of hands-on experience, so she’s in it. She’s hot. She’s a rainmaker.”

Roberts’ resume includes being the first woman on the board of Dean Witter. She also ran Acoustiguide, offered in museums and galleries, and FPG International, which sold for $80 million and became part of Getty Images.

Roberts’ experiences have taught her that small businesses drive economic growth and that helping them expand “is a lot easier than sorting out GM and would be a much quicker fix for the economy.”

She agreed to join the program at the height of the economic boom last year, but altered her advice when the economy turned sharply downward last fall.

“The first half of last year was very much on survival: cutting costs, making sure you didn’t lose a client, cash flow,” she said.

But she isn’t surprised to hear that most participants made few references to the recession — she says they’re typically so overwhelmed with detail that they tend to be myopic and “don’t appreciate their own evolution.”

This year, Roberts said, the program will focus on growth in the recovering economy.

Not everyone finds the advice useful. John Lowy runs the River Room, a restaurant and jazz bar in West Harlem, and has been an entrepreneur for 30 years, much more experience than most participants. He learned a few things from his peers, but nothing substantive. He would, however, advise other entrepreneurs to jump at the free opportunity.

The program also failed to keep all of its participants afloat. The Morningside Bookshop closed after the group meetings started last fall. Still, the project earned rave reviews from most business owners interviewed.

Columbia Business School has committed to running two more two-year program sessions, the next round starting in fall 2010.