Community Spotlight: West Valley Community Food Pantry
Community Spotlight by Autumn Byars, GCS Hunger Advocacy Fellow
The West Valley Community Food Pantry, housed at and run by St. John’s Lutheran Church in Glendale, is open for distributions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. At the invitation of associate pastor for outreach and synod director of generosity and strategic development, Pastor Dan Potaznick, I joined director June Kelsey and her team on Thursday, June 6th.
When I arrived shortly after 9:00 am, the team was already hard at work, sorting donations and packing bags for families. June showed me around the pantry, highlighting the several large freezers and refrigerators used to store perishable donations, as well as the store room full of self stable items. On one set of selves in the back of the pantry sat several tote bags specifically for homeless clients; all of the food in these bags is nonperishable, don’t need refrigeration, and are easy open. These are called “June Bags,” since June dreamed up this specified option for those experiencing homelessness after she took over the pantry’s direction.
The West Valley Community Food Pantry was started in 1991 at Advent Lutheran Church (near 75th Ave and Camelback). Then called the Lutheran Social Ministries of the Southwest Food Pantry. Families were able to receive food three times a year. Eventually, Advent Lutheran closed and the pantry was adopted by St. John’s Lutheran Church. Eventually, the name was changed to reflect the pantry’s current scope of service.
The pantry now sits in one long room, made of several old conjoined Sunday School rooms. At one end, clients present their ID to the volunteer; for a first-time visit, the client fills out a form with contact information and family size. Upon a client’s second visit, they must bring some sort of identification for each member of the family — including children. The Pantry accepts a wide range of IDs, including passports, school IDs, or just about anything else proving a person’s real existence. The volunteer at the door, Chris, explains to me that she does her best to work with clients on the ID requirements; the policy exists to ensure that the pantry is able to have enough food for everyone. Like most food banks, the first volunteer checks the client’s ID against an internal database (or enter new clients into it) to double check information, family size, and the time of the client’s last visit. Once a client presents identification for the children and other members of the family, this is also noted in the record, and they don’t need to bring it again. The pantry also limits their distributions to two boxes per month, except in the case of clients needing June bags, and they work to make sure that the supplies they give out can stretch over a couple weeks.
Chris then writes the family size and other needs on a sticky note. She asks every client if they need any additional items, like diapers or pet food. Once she makes a note, she returns the client’s ID and passes the note onto another volunteer. Then, the client goes back outside and walks down to a door at the other end of the room. As the client is walking the length of the building, the volunteers pull a box of food from a set of shelves; the boxes on these shelves are packed with varying amounts of food for families of different sizes. They then add some items of fresh produce and dairy (depending on what is on hand), as well as the a portion of meat from the refrigerator. There is also usually some sort of baked good donated from a local bakery. The volunteers also add bags containing portions of rice, beans, and sugar to the box, along with any additional items that were requested. If a client needs a cart to take their food to the parking lot, they are able to exchange their ID for one.
The inside of the Pantry is perpetually in motion; as volunteers give out boxes and during slow periods, there is always more work to do. The Pantry receives and purchases quite a bit of bulk-packaged food, so there is always a bag of sugar to be portioning or a bucket of pickle spears to be split into small plastic clamshells. Additionally, one volunteer staffs the store room.
This room is separated from the rest of the pantry by walls and a door because it has just received an air-conditioning upgrade. Here all of the shelf-stable foods, like canned goods and boxed dry food, is kept on shelves stacked up to the ceiling. One volunteer — that Thursday it was Mark — packs the boxes that will wait on the shelves in the main pantry to be picked up. This way, the pantry is able to assemble boxes in advance so that clients are not kept waiting. Mark packs boxes in all different sizes so that there is always something ready to go for any family that may show up. The shelves are posted with guidelines established June, specifying what quantity of each item should go in a box for each family size. Since he is right next to the door where clients pick up boxes, he also keeps a tally of the number of families of each size served that day.
The volunteers are a tight knit group who have gotten to know each other well while working together at the food bank. There are two married couples volunteering on the day of my visit — including Mark from the store room and Chris from the front desk — and more couples volunteer on other days of the week. Together, they truly embody the old adage that many hands make light work. They move between different jobs as they are needed, joking together and telling stories about their children as they go. I am always curious about how pantries handle volunteering — some work with whatever volunteers walk through the door and assign tasks as they arise, and others use a much more specific schedule. June has employed a middle-of-the-road strategy; anyone who shows up to volunteer can be put to work, but she also has her regular contributors sign up for specific volunteer days on a schedule. This way, June can make sure that she always has a volunteer who knows how to access the database working the check-in table, and so on, without overworking any of her volunteers. Every month, she prints out and distributes a calendar with everyone’s names and assignments.
I was surprised to learn how much support the Food Pantry receives from other congregations. Most of the volunteers are members of other churches, though a few call St. John’s home. Peace Lutheran in Peoria packs the bags of rice and beans and drops then deliver them to the pantry, and Mark and Chris are both members there. Pastor Joaquín Garcia and members from Iglesia Luterana Nueva Vida (who meet at St John’s) oversee the sorting of clothing donations, which are then displayed outside for anyone in need.
In the middle of the pantry, between shelves and various goods, is June’s large wooden desk. Here, she works on grants, schedules, food sourcing, and partners. During my visit, a friend of June’s daughter dropped by with a collection of materials donated from a kindergarten classroom. Some of the items will be kept to be given to families with children, and others will be passed on to teachers and the West Valley Lutheran Thrift Shop. June sources the Pantry’s food from several places, including grocery stores in the area. I asked her about how these partnerships developed, and unlike the many pantries I know that take advantage of larger grocery rescue programs, she said she and her volunteers have just spent years asking around. She says that most businesses are more than happy to give surplus to them as long as one of their volunteers are able to pick up these donations on a regular schedule. The pet food started coming to them when she happened to meet a woman who worked for a nonprofit relating to animal and pet care. Various volunteers have cultivated relationships with grocery stores and a local bakery over the years, that have added up to a significant intake of food. The most food, however, is secured through the grants that June writes while sitting at her desk.
Perhaps the pantry’s most empowering partner is ELCA World Hunger. World Hunger provided the funds that purchased the refrigeration needed to operate a food bank on this scale. World Hunger also underwrites quite a bit of food purchasing. This allows June to purchase shelf-stable food and other dry goods in bulk, which in turn means that she can budget their resources throughout the year. At one point in the morning, June took me behind the sanctuary and showed me a large room where they keep pallets and cases of food, diapers, pet items, and more. West Valley Lutheran Thrift Store also regularly disperses grants to the West Valley Community Food Pantry to help with food purchasing. Through financial support, June is able to make sure that she always has the staples her clients rely on.
I am continually fascinated by feeding ministries because each one is unique. Each one operates, sources, staffs, and distributes in different ways to meet the specific needs of its community. Congregations and volunteers are able to find the avenues of giving which are most amplified by the individuals in the congregation, and hungry folks get help that helps to meet their specific needs. I’ve never visited a pantry where the volunteers take on so much of the direct operation; usually the board of directors and the volunteers handing out food are detached from each other, but most of the volunteers I met are on the Pantry’s board. They give of their time outside of distributions, which allows the pantry to take in more fresh groceries and community donations. Everyone volunteering on the day of my visit was a retiree, and for all of them, it seems, their work at the Pantry has become an essential expression of their faith. They are able to staff the Pantry three days a week, as well as contribute to all of the background efforts that allow a pantry to function.
We talked about all sorts of things while working together, including my college experience, their grandchildren who are starting classes at ASU in the fall, the goings on at our respective churches, vacations, their children’s career changes, and the trends they see in the neighborhood and at the pantry. Not every pantry has such a cheerful, familiar group of volunteers, and I left feeling like I made several new friends. It was especially clear that their love for each other sustains the work they do for their neighbors.
