Community Spotlight: Grand Canyon Food Pantry
The Grand Canyon Food Pantry’s mission statement is “helping each other, one grocery bag at a time.” The pantry is located within the Grand Canyon National Park— the only food pantry operating out of a U.S. National Park— grew out of this sentiment. Last week, pantry director Michael Scott invited me up for a tour to learn all about this pantry in our network!
The Grand Canyon Food Pantry
Most of our readers have probably paid a visit to the Grand Canyon at some point; after all, approximately 5 million people visit the park every year. There’s a lot to see: sweeping vistas, towering trees, fossils, and animals. One thing most people don’t see is the network of access roads that lead to the various residences of and services for the folks who live at the Grand Canyon.
Well over 2,000 people live within the National Park; the majority of residents are National Park Service employees, hospitality staff, maintenance workers, and their family members. The Havasupai Tribe also has a section of reservation land within park boundaries which is home to a handful of families.
Along one of these back roads, with administration buildings and horse stables, is the Grand Canyon Food Pantry. The pantry currently resides in the park’s old jail house, where trouble makers used to be detained by rangers. The building is small, with thick walls, and even though there are still grates on the windows, it works perfectly for Mike’s purposes.
TEFP application (and cash donations)
Inside, the walls are covered in posters in several languages, all about nutrition facts and assistance agencies. On top of the small set of metal drawers that is the closest thing to a desk in the room are stacks of pamphlets, applications for TEFAP and CSFP, which are federal nutritional assistance programs that provide food boxes and goods, as opposed to monetary assistance, sign in sheets, resources made in partnership with the town of Tusayan, water bottles, hand sanitizer, and an acrylic box that Mike tells me was supposed to be a suggestion box; the community insists on submitting cash instead of suggestions. As this small administrative area indicates, a lot goes on at the pantry. Three refrigerators and a chest freezer store a variety of meat, produce, and sandwiches donated by local business. The other two thirds of the building are taken up by shelves, used for canned goods. The pantry isn’t open for distributions on Tuesdays, so it looked a little sparse on the day of my visit. However, that doesn’t mean Mike and his volunteers are short on food; the pantry also uses to large storage units to store a set of walk-in coolers. These refrigerators hold cases of donated apples, bags of potatoes, more sandwiches, a sack of carrots, ground beef, and more. The food just needs to be brought over to the pantry by volunteers.
The pantry takes donations from several churches, notably Shephard of the Hills Lutheran Church in Flagstaff where Mike and his wife are members, as well as the ecumenical Christian group made up of park residents. Mike also regularly rescues food from the grocery store and minimart in Tusayan, diverting produce and other goods from become waste. Flagstaff Family Food Center and St. Mary’s Food Bank also provide the pantry with food, including St. Mary’s tribal food boxes, which ensure that clients living on the reservation can still prepare traditional recipes. The pantry also buys food using grant money from Coconino County and other organizations.
Mike at the pantry’s storage space and refrigeration units
“Now you have proof that you were actually here!” Mike said after having me pose for a picture
This is quite a few moving parts for a pantry to operate, especially one that is 100% volunteer run, and many people, when they first learn about all the pantry does, wonder how there could possible be that much need. I know that I don’t think about national parks and food insecurity in the same sentence. However, the reality is that many residents in the park consistently struggle with food insecurity. Some positions at the park pay well, but others, especially service and hospitality jobs, don’t. The remote location of the Grand Canyon also means that shopping options are limited, so folks are often often left with the choice of paying high prices at the few stores and restaurants or nothing. Nowhere within the park, and few places locally, accept EBT (food stamps), so employees that qualify for SNAP can only use that assistance to buy food from online retailer like Amazon. Mike estimates that he serves 80-100 families a week, which is on par with the need met by pantries in urban areas.
Mike and his wife Anne retired to the Grand Canyon several years ago, and Anne is a volunteer park ranger. Mike’s work began in 2017 when he learned that 50% - 60% of school children in the Grand Canyon Unified School District were eligible for free and reduced price school lunch. When Chief Ranger Matt Vandzura shared this, Mike wondered how kids were getting fed during summer vacation, but there wasn’t really an answer. In response, Mike worked with the Grand Canyon Community Church to run a summer meal program out of the park’s recreation center. Volunteers made sandwiches and donated food, and eventually St. Mary’s Food Bank partnered with them. The next summer, Mike and his team ran the program out of the Kaibab Learning Center, the Rec Center, and the Tusayan Sport Complex. These groups all trained their staff to meet the requirements from the Department of Economic Security and Federal Department of Agriculture, as they were now receiving support from these agencies.
Mike showing off one of the pantry’s refrigerators
While there had been discussions about the broader problem of food insecurity in the park, it was more difficult to organize relief efforts that didn’t focus on school kids. That changed during the 2018-2019 government shutdown. This was the longest government shutdown in history and caused a massive wave of furloughs across the country; as the National Parks Service is a federal agency, the park was hit hard. Many staff struggled as paychecks were deferred and workers were furloughed as services were closed. In response to the need, the Grand Canyon Emergency Food Pantry was formed and worked with St Mary’s and park administration to store and deliver food from the recreation center. During this time, the pantry hosted three Soup & Talk events, where park administration and residents could discuss the need. After the shutdown, the park community was convinced that the pantry should be permanent.
The Tusayan and broader northern Arizona community are deeply involved in supporting the pantry, especially the Kids Cafe during the summer. The national park exists to steward the stunning natural resource that is the park, and caring for its residents is part of that stewardship. The pantry’s board is ever changing, but currently it is made up of ex-officio park staff, representatives from stakeholders, local business, and community members.
On Tuesday mornings, Mike takes food from the pantry and delivers it to the families living on the reservation area of the park. I joined him that morning, helping load up the van. The Havasupai people have lived in and around the Grand Canyon for much longer than the concept of a national park, the state of Arizona, or our country even existed. When Americans wished to turn the land into a park, the Havasupai were made to leave their homeland. While the Havasupai reservation encompasses a part of the eastern canyon outside of the park and has now been granted land within the park, this disrupted the community’s agricultural practices. The park was developed and fostered economic activity, the Tribe was excluded. As their traditional homeland became an incredibly expensive place to live, food insecurity and illness have become incredibly large problems for the Havasupai tribe. There is a deep irony in reality that the people who hold this land most sacred struggle the most. So, Mike has worked to make sure that Tribal members have always been able to access the pantry, which includes sourcing preferred foods and taking food out to their area of the park.
For Mike, as for many of us, the operation has always been a labor of love and an expression of faith. As we drove back to Tusayan from the pantry, he and I talked about the many ways struggling people fall through the cracks and have their needs over looked by their employers, neighbors, and sometimes even churches. Detailing his enduring passion for this work, Mike spoke of his own faith; in the his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to feed the hungry— that’s a command.
If you are visiting the Grand Canyon and would like to support the pantry with a donation of time, money, or food, contact Mike through the pantry’s website.
