Month: July 2024

What Can Food Pantries Offer Besides Food?

Do you remember the toilet paper shortage of 2020? I remember cruising the largely empty aisles of my grocery store under signs announcing, “1 package per person,” with strict enforcement at checkout and rampant fears among my community that it wouldn’t be enough.  

It’s an essential supply that we previously took for granted, without which life is significantly more uncomfortable. Toilet paper is also one of the most requested non-food items at many food pantries.

Because food is essential for survival, it makes sense that services prioritize it.

However, that focus can make it easy to forget that there are other nonfood requirements for modern life that many people struggle to access.

Americans tend to have a very narrow view of what poverty looks like. I can’t count the number of times I’ve shared that I work with food pantries, and people assume that my clients are exclusively unemployed and houseless.

Thanks to the myth of the American dream, we are eager to assume that someone who has the capacity to work has the resources to support themselves.

The reality is that having a full-time job is not a guarantee that an individual can afford housing, healthcare, food, and other necessities. While keeping our neighbors nourished is an essential goal, food pantries are also well-positioned to offer support on other household products.

Here are the most important nonfood essentials that food pantries can offer:

Pet Food

Publicize to the community if you can take open bags of pet food.

One of the hardest yet most impactful responsibilities I once had was accepting donations of leftover dog or cat food after a beloved pet passed away. Donors regularly reduced me to tears in the parking lot with stories about their pet, and shared the reassurance they felt knowing the food went to animals in need. We bagged pet food into gallon-sized Ziplock’s, which was not enough to fully support larger animals but was adequate for smaller critters. This interaction offered a unique opportunity for connection and empathy.

Menstrual Hygiene Products

Partner with a local period advocacy group who might have access to menstrual hygiene products for distribution. PLEASE allow your clients to choose the supplies they want rather than just handing them a package or a mixed bag.

Laundry Detergent and Dish Soap

Host a laundry detergent or dish soap-specific drive. Encourage donors to donate these items or funds to purchase these in bulk.

These are essential for dignity, hygiene, and simple practicality, and there aren’t many options for working around their absence. I’m thrilled to have just learned there are entire organizations dedicated to this effort like Each Stitch Counts based in New Jersey.

Diapers

Is there a diaper bank in your community? There are often programs specifically dedicated to diapers, and connecting clients with diapers and wipes is a much-needed resource. Additionally, holding diaper drives for your pantry can be fun and successful.

People often like to donate supplies for newborns, but babies grow fast and there’s not much someone can do with a too-small diaper, so I often encourage donations of larger sizes. I encourage offering diaper exchanges, so people can drop off diapers that are too small or brands that didn’t work for them. Opened packages are often totally fine!

Toilet Paper

It’s cheaper if you buy it in bulk, but too many people can’t meet that upfront cost no matter what the long-term savings are. Although offering a single roll at every visit is inadequate, it can still be an incredibly helpful addition to pantry options.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Where Do I Find Super Volunteers?

Every food pantry has at least one super volunteer. The person who is always happy to fill in when someone else cancels at the last minute, who knows how to work in every position, and acts as a compassionate mentor for new volunteers. The volunteer who just laughs and rolls up their sleeves when you hesitantly ask them to take on a nasty job like rinsing the compost bins or sweeping under the produce-sorting table.

Often, these volunteers seem to appear organically. Someone excited to have an impact on their community, enthusiastic about the policies they’re following, and happy to connect with the people around them. At every pantry I’ve ever worked at, there was always one volunteer (or several when I was lucky) about whom we’d wistfully say, “I wish we could clone you,” and “I need ten of [that person.]”

But it’s not just luck that finds you the best volunteers.

Organizational mission, culture, and practices have a significant influence on the community members we attract and retain.

Here are some simple steps to help you find and keep the volunteers you need most.

  • Be clear on your mission. Volunteers seek out organizations that align with their own interests and passions. You’re more likely to find volunteers that are aligned with your mission if the public is clear on what that is.

If reducing food waste is your goal, advertise that. If you’re focused on social justice and root causes of hunger, don’t be shy in sharing. This helps volunteers identify any mismatch of values early on. A volunteer who wants to minimize food waste may not be a fit for a pantry focused on maintaining the highest quality of food and asks them to throw out options they deem usable.

            I once knew a food pantry leader reluctant to clarify the mission for this same reason- they didn’t want to risk committing to any values that might deter someone from volunteering. This is how we ended up with volunteers inconsistently enforcing policies, increased conflict, and excessive staff energy spent on volunteer supervision and mediation. If we had clarified our specific values and goals, our volunteer network might have been smaller, but healthier and more productive.

  • Find teaching opportunities. Every quiet moment should be an educational opportunity for volunteers, which requires having staff who are knowledgeable and ready to share. Although more intensive, one-on-one conversations are where your volunteers are most likely to have an a-ha moment about your work! It can be easy for food pantries to neglect the value of continuing education for staff, so make sure you’re paying fair wages and not burning them out– your volunteers will notice in the quality of interaction and education.
  • Enforce client dignity. Like any industry, we all have encounters with people who are challenging. Food pantry clients are likely to carry trauma and stress, which can make interactions harder and bias our attitudes. Proactively working to uplift our community is a habit that needs to be fostered and developed through our language choices. It’s tempting to say, “that client was annoying,” but making the transition to “I was challenged by that interaction” or “I was getting frustrated in that conversation,” avoids fostering an adversarial attitude.

Any time a volunteer has a negative comment about a client, I try to find an alternative idea that puts them in a positive light. Hearing, “they took way too much food,” I respond with, “they must feel so secure to have that food for their family right now. I can’t imagine the relief.” “That person was so rude today” answered with, “I hope their day is better now that they know their family is having dinner tonight.”

  • Prioritize making a positive impact on the community you serve. When we amplify impact, it helps us move away from the stationary goal of providing food. This attitude also makes it easier to embrace new strategies, because of the widely accepted goal for progress.

Volunteers are notoriously reluctant to change, but by incorporating a commitment to outcomes rather than inputs, you can make it a little easier to support the evolution of your program.

Consistent, positive messaging from leadership is infectious, and the most powerful opportunity we have for defining the culture of our anti-hunger organization. Practice enough, and your volunteers will start to internalize this way of thinking and pass it on to new volunteers as it becomes a standard part of the organization.

This attitude is difficult to get started, but through repetition, it’s possible to build momentum and establish your organization as one where the volunteers are known to be well-educated on food insecurity, compassionate about the stigma of visiting a food pantry, and enthusiastic about stepping up when and where you need it.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Thriving vs. Surviving in Food Pantries

I once worked with a food bank whose mission stated that the root cause of hunger was nutrition education (they’ve since changed it). By teaching people to cook, they proposed we could solve food insecurity. However, this perspective naively ignores the systemic causes of hunger in favor of teaching people how to cook dry beans.

Unfortunately, this perspective is far too common, which is why I strongly advocate against using cooking classes and nutrition education as anti-hunger tools. However, it’s important to recognize that these opportunities still have incredible value- they just aren’t a solution to hunger.

Cooking classes shouldn’t be our answer to helping people survive- they don’t influence the conditions that prevent the purchase of food that households need. They are, however, a powerful component of enabling people to thrive.

Increasing confidence and comfort working with diverse foods allows people to eat a wider variety of options, often increases interest in healthy eating, and has many other benefits for participants.

Teaching people how to garden is not an effective strategy for saving them money on food, but it is a powerful opportunity to engage with their food, be more active, eat healthier, and connect with their neighbors. These kinds of events build relationships and help bring fun and health to the process of preparing and eating- a fundamental career goal of mine.

Delicious, pleasurable food is an essential component of maintaining a healthy quality of life.

Anti-hunger organizations with a holistic approach absolutely should offer these classes. We just need to be thoughtful about how we present them. They don’t solve the problem, but they still enormously benefit people facing food insecurity.

Food banks were invented primarily to provide a short-term response to acute problems rather than addressing chronic poverty, as they now do. Intended to keep people from starvation, these programs often maintain a distinction between the resources necessary to survive and the resources to thrive. This attitude has become engrained in anti-hunger attitudes.

My food pantry never gave away a filet mignon without a volunteer commenting about how this food was too good for the food pantry or our clients. The subtext was that our options weren’t supposed to be ones that our shoppers enjoyed, relished, or were proud of. Food pantry food was supposed to help people survive, nothing more.

How can food pantries use food to help our clients thrive?

  • Prioritize delicious food. While there is an urgency to get people enough food to eat, we need to increase our commitment to good food. Offer essential ingredients like oils and sauces. Commit to spices and seasonings. Focus on whole food ingredients and remember that food pantry clients still enjoy a box of cookies or the occasional ice cream. Remind your team there’s no food that’s too good for your neighbors, or items that they don’t deserve.
  • Celebrate abundance. Even with an emphasis on quality, that doesn’t mean that we’re excused for maintaining a scarcity mindset. Food insecurity is an emotional challenge just as much as a physical one. The knowledge of looming hunger increases stress, anxiety, and forces people to think differently than they would if they were food secure. Ensuring people have enough food that they feel confident and secure is an essential component of thriving.
  • Emphasize culturally specific foods. Food justice includes providing people with foods that are relevant and familiar. Many volunteers who are predominantly white retirees of western European descent, may forget that every culture has specific foods associated with different holidays, events, and traditions. Emphasizing the importance of these, as well as offering education on specifics, can help volunteers and the broader community recognize the value of trying to do better than prevent starvation.  

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Why Don’t Single Moms Deserve More Support?

At one of my previous food pantries, we served a woman nearly every week who came to shop with three boys under eight in tow. Cheerful and rambunctious, they behaved expectedly- walking alongside mom quickly devolved into a fast-paced game of tag around the produce table that made us all a little bit nervous. We did our best to keep everyone safe and comfortable but recognized the challenges of running errands with three small children. After waiting in line outside for an hour, it was no surprise they had energy to burn off.

Nearly every time she visited, a volunteer would sidle up to me and comment on how this mom needed to do a better job managing her kids. Not only was she not able to provide them with the food they needed, but she was letting them behave disrespectfully in the pantry!

In the context of a food pantry, rollicking happy children were an indicator of their mother’s inadequacies as a caregiver.

It absolutely would have been easier for everyone- Mom, my pantry staff and volunteers, and other clients if she hadn’t brought her children, but parents rarely have that flexibility. Single parents even less so.

(Today I’m considering the stigma against single moms specifically, but single parents everywhere deal with many of the same barriers.)

Single mothers are a controversial demographic when it comes to welfare and anti-poverty efforts. While society is generally enthusiastic about fighting childhood hunger, we hold much more complex attitudes about their mothers.

Our society has a specific vision of who deserves food assistance and welfare recognized as “the deserving poor.” These are the individuals we believe deserve assistance because they are unable to change their own situation- namely, children and seniors. Unable to participate in the labor market, these two groups are deemed helpless to conditions around them and are therefore deserving of additional aid.

The problem with creating the deserving poor is that it automatically fosters the idea that there is an undeserving poor- people who do have the capacity to escape poverty, if only they try hard enough. This perspective assumes that economic mobility is possible with enough effort (despite ample evidence to the contrary), largely blaming poverty on the individuals living it.

Single mothers fall somewhere in between the deserving and undeserving poor: no one believes that children should go hungry, but our society also is reluctant to support people for choices we disapprove of, and single motherhood is one of those.

Childcare is still primarily viewed as the domain of women, and societal expectations are that mothers meet all their children’s needs. When women aren’t the perfect parent, they’re seen as a failure.

 (Read How the Other Half Eats by Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD for a great analysis of this.)

Distrust of single mothers is also amplified by the concept of the welfare queen. The pervasive myth that women have additional children simply to maximize public benefits colors the support our society is willing to provide. Culturally, we tend to want to punish women for their choice to become a parent rather than lift them up with the support they need.

How can your anti-hunger efforts support single parents?

Design kid friendly pantries. Single parents often have no other option than to take their children shopping. In my wildest dreams, pantries would have a free childcare option or at least a designated play space, but I recognize our world’s not ready for this yet. Baring that, there are child-friendly steps pantries can take:

  • Practice flexibility if you have long lines. Do clients have to stay in their spot in line, or can you switch to a number or lottery system? Any parent of a toddler knows that waiting quietly in a long line (full of anxious, worried, and stressed individuals) can be hard, and some parents may prefer to go hungry than face that challenge with their child.
  • Offer shopping carts with a child seat, not just baskets, to help parents contain small or active children.
  • Maintain a safe space for kids to play. One of my pantries had a bookshelf for donated books that we allowed children to take, and it was not unusual for a parent to have to drag their older child away from a book at the end of their visit. I loved it!
  • Flexible hours– including accessibility during school hours, evenings, and weekends. This makes pantries more available for parents who may need to come when their kids are in school, when another person is able to watch them, or when they have the time and flexibility.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Can We Make Food Pantry Food Delicious?

Several years ago, one of my food pantries received a large donation of spices. We were excited as seasonings are always in short supply, and it was a rarity to offer our neighbors cinnamon, thyme, and turmeric.

Although some of the spices went quickly, most of our clients, who had backgrounds in South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia, were not interested in turmeric.  Cases of it sat in the warehouse as just a few adventurous shoppers chose to give it a taste.

By complete coincidence, this donation occurred just when our pantry was gearing up for an influx of immigrant families arriving from Afghanistan after the fall of their government. We were struggling to assemble a food selection that adhered to Halal requirements and cultural traditions.

Our Afghani shoppers were thrilled with the turmeric. These families were looking to recreate familiar meals made with whole food ingredients after being thrust into a foreign country, and turmeric was an essential component reminding them of home. Even though we didn’t have all the foods they were used to, an abundance of this spice allowed them to recreate familiar flavors anyways. In no time at all, we gave away all our turmeric.

If you’ve ever donated to a food drive before, you’ve likely contemplated what types of foods you think food pantry shoppers might like. Canned fruits and vegetables, boxed potatoes, and dry beans are all likely selections. Nutritional quality is often a primary factor for choosing what foods to donate, recognizing that access to healthy options can be limited for people experiencing food insecurity. High levels of salt, sugar, and fat are popular concerns.

However, those healthy foods don’t always taste very good on their own. When cooking in your own kitchen, you likely cook in olive oil or butter, add a little salt and pepper, and incorporate other seasonings. No matter how healthy you are eating, you (hopefully) add flavor to your meals.

Taste and the value of delicious food are often neglected components of food security.

Too often, the effort to fight hunger stops with acquiring the basic ingredients without a thought given to the final step of transforming food into a meal.

If we want to encourage families to learn to cook and eat together, we need to ensure they have the tools to do so. Spices are essential for making our food enjoyable, practicing cultural traditions, and evoking memories.

After working with thousands of food pantry clients, I have learned that most people know what they need to do to eat healthy; they simply lack the resources to do so. Although we’ve made progress increasing access to fresh fruits and veggies, it’s still hard to cook collard greens without oil, or to assemble a curry without turmeric or cumin. Even the healthiest eater is unlikely to eat a dry sweet potato unless they have no other options.

Data shows that adding spices and seasoning to meals enhances flavor while increasing nutrient accessibility. But spices are some of the most expensive components of a meal, which means many people experiencing food insecurity can’t afford to buy them.

Why are people living in poverty condemned for not eating healthily when they are denied access to the ingredients that make a meal palatable?

It’s practically a cliché to condemn people experiencing poverty for eating luxurious foods like steak or lobster. But in doing so, we’ve unintentionally reinforced the idea that this population doesn’t deserve to eat things that are delicious. Certainly, steak and lobster are regularly treated as inappropriate because of their cost, but also because they are delicious. People experiencing hunger aren’t considered deserving of delicious food.

I emphatically believe that it’s possible to eat healthy food that also tastes wonderful, but only when we have the tools necessary to succeed. We can build a world where we all have access to healthy food, and meals that leaves us content to sit at the table for just one more pleasurable bite.

How do we build anti-hunger spaces celebrating delicious food?

  • Spice drives. Let your donor community know the importance of making food taste good by encouraging everyone to donate spices and seasonings. The more variety, the better!
  • Taste tests. Prepare meals using only the options available at your organization. This is a great opportunity for staff and volunteers to experience the reality of working with limited options. Celebrate when you have the ingredients you need to make something truly delicious, but don’t shy away from discussing why it doesn’t taste delicious, and the challenges this raises for your shoppers.
  • Purchase seasonings. Food banks and pantries are increasingly making their own food purchases. Find out the spices in highest demand at your organization and consider adding them to your purchased foods. A little can go a long way and can help other staple ingredients taste better and be more versatile.  

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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