By By Greg Sukiennik,The Berkshire Eagle

Copyright berkshireeagle

PITTSFIELD — The city’s largest food pantry has a new name amid growing need and rising prices.

With cuts in benefits taking effect and food costs rising, “We are increasing our budget significantly,” Becky Crane, board president of the Pittsfield Community Food Pantry, said Monday. “We’re spending more money on food than we used to have to spend, and we expect that need will continue to increase.”

The pantry serves about 1,000 community members every week, including 550 weekly home deliveries, providing nutritious food to people who otherwise might face difficult choices about eating or meeting other needs.

Some households receive food every week, and some less frequently, Crane said.

With that in mind, the Pittsfield Community Food Pantry — formerly the South Community Food Pantry — is hosting “Rock the Pantry,” a benefit concert at the Colonial Theatre at 7 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets are $40 and $60 plus fees and are available online from Berkshire Theatre Group.

All proceeds benefit the pantry and its core mission.

The benefit features a slate of local performers, trading their talent for community support of hungry neighbors: Folk singer-songwriter Billy Keane, the Wanda Houston Band, Natalia Bernal and Jason Ennis, and 15-year-old award-winning Elvis Presley tribute artist Jackson DuCharme.

The Wanda Houston Band, a long-time local favorite, specializes in jazz and rhythm and blues spanning from the 1920s through the 1970s. Keane is known for his indie-folk sound and powerful storytelling.

According to his YouTube page, DuCharme has won two youth Elvis tribute artist contests and placed in two professional competitions. Bernal, a Chilean-born vocalist, and Ennis, an acclaimed guitarist, will be joined by percussionist Manu Uriona, rounding out the evening with jazz and Latin American music.

The Colonial made sense as a venue, given that it’s across the street from the pantry’s home at the United Church of Christ, Pittsfield, at 110 South St. Mary Spina, who helps raise money for the nonprofit, said Berkshire Theatre Group and its director, Kate Maguire, were kind enough to provide use of the historic theater for the show, allowing all proceeds to benefit the pantry and its more than 1,000 weekly users.

“With cuts in benefits, we’re needing to buy more food,” Crane said. “And it’s gotten more expensive. Even cans have gotten more expensive because aluminum is more expensive. We try to provide fresh produce and meat for our shoppers every week — and that has been harder to do.”

In August, the pantry served 1,463 households comprising 4,050 individuals, Crane said. Each week it spends about $2,000 to purchase produce, $1,500 for milk, and $1,000 for meat, supplementing a generous supply of food from the Western Mass Food Bank.

“When people receive food from the pantry, it supports their overall financial well-being,” Crane added. “They have a few more dollars to pay for rent or prescription medications, or other needs. Supporting the pantry provides critical support for our neighbors.”

About one in six Massachusetts residents relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to put food on the table. Cuts passed by the Republican-led Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump will result in millions of dollars in additional costs for Massachusetts to administer the program.

“With cuts and everything and prices going up, this is so timely for us to do this,” Spina said. “Everything is getting much more expensive and the need is greater and greater.”

Crane said the Berkshire Theatre Group making the Colonial available is “a huge gift … and it’s a really beautiful thing to be in the exact location where we are, sitting at the fundraiser in the midst of where the need is. It’s not something far away; it’s right here.”