PUTNAM — Sister Eleanor Baldoni understands poverty; she sees it every day. Baldoni, a member of the Secular Branch of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit (DHS), has spent 39 years as the assistant director of Project Northeast, one of the region’s non-profit, non-denominational, private food pantries and social service agencies for the needy.

In order to help in Baldoni’s work the sisters held their 15th Annual St. Joseph’s Day Supper in the dining room at the DHS Provincial House on Church Street, where they donated over $350.

Believed to have begun in Sicily in the Middle Ages, St. Joseph’s Supper is a traditional vegetarian Lenten celebration, where people eat very little and donate the money to the poor that they would otherwise have spent on food.

After the supper of vegetable soup and bread, Baldoni told her fellow sisters about some of the local people she’s helped recently. They are the kind of people she’s seen every day for almost 40 years, but most of us either never see them or try hard not to look at them: the mother suffering from tuberculosis who had no food for her two young children, the man who needed gasoline for his car so he could get to medical appointments, the alcoholic man who needed $50 a week in order to stay in rehab, the man with no money who had to pay court fees or go to jail, the homeless man who they put up in a hotel for three days while they found him a place to live – people without heat or electricity or food or rent – or without anything at all.

Located in two small basement rooms at St. Mary Church of the Visitation on Providence Street in Putnam, Project Northeast helps an average of about 150 of the region’s families every month, based solely on need, regardless of race, color or religion. Serving the area from Plainfield and Sterling, north to the Massachusetts border, needy recipients can get temporary help, if it’s available, with non-perishable food, as well as money for rent, electricity, heat and other basic necessities. Although it’s a ministry of the Diocese of Norwich, it’s supported entirely by donations. At the moment Project Northeast gives away an average of $3,000 to $4,000 a month, but it all depends on how much money comes in.

“We don’t have a budget; the more we have, the more we can give to the people who need it,” Baldoni said.

Even though Baldoni has spent her life caring for the poor, she’s not naïve. Experience has taught her to carefully checks people’s stories.

“Nobody gets cash,” she said. ”We talk to landlords and electric companies and whoever we need to and pay them directly, so we know that the bills are paid.”

Project Northeast Director and DHS Chaplain Rev. Richard L. Archambault is grateful for the help.

“All the money we get goes for the poor people in our area,” Archambault said. “They’re our neighbors and we’re grateful that the donations come in so we can help them.”

Baldoni said Project Northeast’s recipients are deserving people who need a break.

“Back when I started in 1978, most of the people we were helping were on welfare,” she said. “Today most of the people we help are working but can’t make it on what they’re getting. They’re the working poor. Many of the rest of the people we see have serious medical problems and are on disability. God bless everyone who helps us to help them.”