Our church is tucked away, on top of a hill, in a cute little neighborhood. That neighborhood also happens to be a low-income area. What once were cute little houses from the 50s have turned into unkept, multi-family homes-not all the homes are unkept, but a lot them.
Rebecca and Rachel have begun volunteering and they really enjoy. If only they enjoyed the chores they get around the house as much as they love volunteering here.
Families are given large quantities of food along with a personal shopper.
We offer a variety of breads and rolls as well as fresh produce.
We purchase food for our food pantry from Food Bank of the Rockies and also take donations at anytime. The Food Bank of the Rockies also has free perishable food at the end of the day and also on other random days when they have a lot of extra produce. This past weekend our church was able to pick up 800 lbs of food for free which included bananas, potatoes, onions, lettuce, lemons, limes, and bread.
I've heard that our church members are becoming quite good at making purchases at the right time and we average about $0.08/lb for the food that gets purchased. They even have Starbucks coffe!
The gal that does the purchasing for our church does a fabulous job. She says she tries to find good and healthy items.
Our wonderful volunteers are checking out the stock on the shelves. We offer everything from fresh produce to cleaning supplies to dog and cat food. It's been great for our church to reach out to the people in the neighborhood and meet some new people too.
5 comments:
Is this in your church basement? How long have you been doing this? How many people come through your doors on a given day that the pantry is open? This is wonderful.
I'm with Lauren on all the questions. Wow-amazing that you can help people right in your own neighborhood that way.
We open the pantry once a month right now. It's been open for a few months, so they're still learning the ropes. It's been fun to watch and see how it all works. People are pretty excited about it, so we have a lot of volunteers. They actually have to take a class in order to get food from Food Bank of the Rockies. I heard it was really eye-opening.
We operate a food pantry on our church property too (our church communities sound very similar). I oscillate between thinking it is great and thinking that it is just another way for people to mooch off of the system.
I'm so judgmental. I have other opinions about the food pantry too, but those are probably best kept to myself. My sinfulness runs deep.
I'm with you, Erin. It was very eye opening to watch some of the people that came through.
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