St Mary’s Launches Mobile Food Pantry
- LARRY HENDRICKS News Team Leader
Volunteers prepare food boxes Monday at the Flagstaff Family Food Center. St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance is now offering mobile pantries in the city.
Alisha Monteigh, left, gets a hand from Manny Siyuja, right, as she walks home from picking up a food box from the Flagstaff Family Food Center Monday. St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance is now offering mobile pantries in the city.
Volunteers prepare food boxes Monday at Flagstaff Family Food Center in May. St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance closed its warehouse in 2013, but continued offering mobile pantries in the city.
Carol Banks came with her neighbor Skip Poe to the Flagstaff Family Food Center parking lot Monday morning.
There, she and Poe received food boxes. They also received a hefty box of fresh vegetables — cabbage, carrots, peppers, onions and potatoes.
“Most of mine is going to some people from the church and some kids from the neighborhood,” Banks said.
Although her husband works, she has lost her job, and the food boxes from St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance help make ends meet.
“These guys save us so much,” she said.
St. Mary’s has begun a new mobile food pantry service in Flagstaff. The pilot project, which is tentatively scheduled for twice a month in Flagstaff, is meant to get fresh, perishable food and emergency food boxes to residents in need.
Visit The Food Pantry
Location: 208 Bates Street in Lewiston, on the corner of Bates and WalnutPhone: 207-513-3841
Tuesday and Friday from 11am 2pm.
Last Wednesday of Every Month 4pm 6pm
For safety reasons we ask that guests not line up outside the building before we open at 11 am. Please arrive during the open hours only. Being first does not offer an advantage in terms of food selection or quantity, and different choices may be available later in the day.
Guests can visit one time per household per calendar week, Tuesday thru Friday.
First-Time Visits
First-time guests, or guests who have not been to the pantry since before February 2019 will be asked to participate in a brief intake process. If possible, we ask that guests bring some form of photo identification and a piece of mail, car registration with proof of address for this first intake. Guests without an address or ID will receive food regardless.
It is also helpful for guests to bring their own plastic or reusable shopping bags to carry food home.
Food Quantity and Selection
Guests to the pantry choose one shopping basket of food regardless of household size or other factors. We prioritize having fresh produce and we try to carry meat, eggs and/or milk when possible. No food item is guaranteed at any specific time or day as we can only distribute what we can get! We do post a daily menu inside the food pantry so that guests can check what options might be available that day.
Hours & Locations
How Does A Food Pantry Work
Food Banks acquire large donations of edible but unmarketable food from the food industry and distribute it to organizations that feed hungry people. Then they provide this food to family in a need.
Our vision is simplebring financial security, dignity, and savings to the millions experiencing financial stress.
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What Is The Difference Between A Food Bank And Food Pantry
A food bank is a non-profit that safely stores millions of pounds of food that will soon be delivered to local food programs, like a food pantry. Food banks are all different sizes. Some are very large – more than 25 of our food banks are double the size of an average wholesale club. Regardless of size, the food they store is donated from local neighbors, retailers, grocery stores, and restaurants. Feeding America also helps connect our network to additional resources, including food.
In order to get the food into the hands of the community, food banks hire drivers to make the deliveries. Every food bank serves a specific area that varies in size. For example, Feeding San Diego serves only one county, but this urban county is packed with over 3.3 million residents. While the St. Marys Food Bank Alliance in Phoenix services 9 of Arizonas 15 counties, requiring their drivers to travel over 400 miles to deliver food. No matter how long or short the drive, every food bank is committed to ending hunger in their communities.
A food pantry is a distribution center where hungry families can receive food. Supplied with food from a food bank, pantries feed hundreds of people per week! Because every community is different, there are many different types of pantries.
What Is The Difference Between A Food Bank And A Food Pantry
Independent community food pantries are self-governing and usually distribute food to their clients on a once-a-month basis. A food bank is the storehouse for millions of pounds of food and other products that go out to the community. A food pantry functions as the arms that reach out to that community directly.
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Expanding Our Reach In Southwest Florida
Even though Meals of Hope donates thousands of meals per month to local Feeding America food banks, there is still a significant need in Southwest Florida. Understanding that the local food banks were unable to distribute as much food as the need required, Meals of Hope opened our first food pantry at the Golden Gate Senior Center in Naples, Florida.
Our food pantries now distribute our five packed meals as well as food from the local food banks, Operation Blessings, Farm Share, local grocery stores, and private donations to 3700 families each week.
New Mobile Food Pantry Distribution Site Opens In New London
United Way held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its newest Mobile Food Pantry distribution site at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Church in New London on September 23. of the event on Facebook.
The Mobile Food Pantry is a critical extension of the work of the Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Center to reduce hunger by bringing food directly into neighborhoods and communities considered food deserts where access to food is limited. The Mobile Pantry now has ten monthly distributions throughout New London County and provides about a weeks worth of food to guests, including fresh produce, dairy products, proteins, and healthy snacks. The Mobile Pantry serves an average of 1,000 households struggling with hunger each month.
The event coincides with Hunger Action Month, an effort of Feeding America to raise awareness of the 1 in 6 Americans facing hunger. People are encouraged to spread the word about hunger in America through a social media campaign featuring photos of themselves with orange spoons and #Spoontember and #HungerActionMonth. Citizens Bank is the statewide sponsor of Hunger Action Month activities.
To accommodate the clients that would normally visit the previous two distribution sites in New London, this new site will remain open for two hours at each distribution that will take place the fourth Wednesday of each month, from 4-6 p.m. A normal distribution followed the ribbon cutting ceremony.
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Beverly Damore, president and CEO of St. Mary’s, was on hand Monday during the first food pantry. She said the purpose of the new service is to emphasize the quality of food with quick delivery right to where clients live.
FOURTEEN PALLETS
A St. Mary’s truck was parked in front of the food center, which cooks and serves a free, hot meal each evening to between 100 and 200 people. It is run largely by volunteers and has a separate governing board.
Fourteen pallets of perishable goods and emergency food boxes were set out for distribution. A line of people had already formed by the time the food boxes were distributed between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The food center itself does not open for dinner until 4:30 p.m.
“With them doing it this way, I think it’s awesome,” Banks said.
She and Poe live nearby, so they don’t have to drive out to the St. Mary’s warehouse on West Route 66. Others remarked on the convenience while they waited.
Damore said the first few pantries will be analyzed to determine how much to distribute, especially as word gets around about the new service. She added that as direct client services go to neighborhoods, St. Mary’s is hoping to distribute more fresh, perishable food items.
The locations for the food pantries will change as other food bank partners come on board to host them, Damore said.
SAVES $300K A YEAR
The decision to host the mobile food pantry was obvious, Saville added.
He and Banks said they appreciate the presence of the pantry.
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Meals Of Hope Food Pantry
According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 88.9 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the year. The remaining 11.1 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 4.3 percent that had very low food security. What this means is that one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food.
While these numbers have declined slightly over the past few years following a recessionary spike that began in 2007, they still represent a significant part of our population that needs our help.
St Marys Food Bank Ready To Help After Maricopa Food Pantry Was Destroyed In Fire
A warehouse stocked with pasta and bread in Phoenix holds more than just a few items on a grocery list. Its a lifeline for the Arizona families who are choosing which bills to pay. The rising price of gas. The rising price of rent. The rising price of food, said Jerry Brown with St. Marys Food Bank. Thats hurting everybody. But if youre the person whos on the edge, that pushes you over the edge.
Brown says because of the fire that destroyed more than 50,000 pounds of food at a pantry in Maricopa, it had to cancel orders set to go out this morning. St. Marys provides the Maricopa Food Pantry with more than half of its donations, according to Brown. Buildings you can replace. Food you can replace. People you cant, he said, thankful at least no one was hurt.
St. Marys works with more than 800 partners a year. The nonprofit is ready to donate food, equipment, even a mobile food pantry to the so-called food desert in Maricopa. Thats an area where food is hard to get ahold of. Not very many grocery stores and when youre food insecure and youre relying on a food bank, theres not another one down the block you can go to.
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