Community Spotlight: Food Bank at Streams in the Desert Lutheran Church

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting several churches and feeding ministries in Tucson! We want to use our blog to help share the stories of various ministries around our synod, both to celebrate ELCA World Hunger’s 50th anniversary, and to foster connections between people doing God’s good work. Stay tuned over the coming weeks to hear more about ministries in Tucson and around the state!

Food pantry director Sandy Holm stands inside the pantry at Streams in the Desert Lutheran Church.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 28th, I made the drive through the desert from my house in Tempe to Streams in the Desert Lutheran Church in middle of Tucson. If you’ve never been to Streams in the Desert’s campus, I highly recommend paying a visit. The main courtyard is full of trees, and, you guessed it, a small fountain and stream, creating a wonderful oasis from the beating May sun.

On a building on the right edge of the courtyard, you will find a small, light blue door.

Through this door is the Streams in the Desert Food Pantry. On the day of my visit, Sandy Holm, the pantry’s director, was also inside. Sandy took over the food pantry during the coronavirus pandemic, a time when many churches and food banks struggled or completely closed their doors. Still, it was also a time when many more people needed help putting food on the table. At that time, Sandy decided to block off the doorway into the pantry with a small, square folding card table. When someone came to the door for food, a volunteer placed one of the brown-bagged parcels on the table, the recipient could take what items they want and leave behind those they did not want. This allowed the volunteers at the Streams Food Pantry to continue distributing food in a way that was safe for them and their clients.

Sandy still distributes the food this way; it’s less complicated to keep people out of the small room housing the pantry and the walkway outside the door is shaded. The blue door stays wide open the whole time the pantry is open, signally to anyone who finds themselves in the courtyard that the pantry is open for business.

The room that the pantry operates out of is wide but shallow, packed with Lutheran paraphernalia like championship trophies from softball tournaments, certificates from Lutheran Social Services, old photos, Sunday school books, and so on. Along the counters and bookshelves sit large, brown paper bags full of food— smaller bags for single adults, and larger packages for families with children.

Sandy and I chatted for quite a while about how she operates and maintains the Streams’ pantry. She still keeps all of her records on paper in a physical binder. Every person who visits the pantry fills out a form with their name, address (if they have one) and number of family members. The form then goes into the thick white binder; in the future, a volunteer will mark down the date every time someone returns to pick up food. The pantry limits clients to two donations per month so that they are able to feed as many people as they can through the month (but if someone is in more need, Sandy will usually find a way to slip them something anyway). Most food pantries have some sort of system like this but many have transitioned to digital record keeping; one of the advantages of still using physical forms is that all volunteers are able to be easily find and add to the records. Sandy doesn’t have to get all her volunteers together and train them on a software, spend money buying a computer, or make sure to appoint and rely on a designated record keeper. This works quite well considering there is usually only one volunteer staffing the pantry.

Shelves inside the pantry

This is one of the many unique aspects of Streams’ Food Pantry; while most pantries are bustling with volunteers during distribution hours, handing out food and sorting donations, Sandy only needs one volunteer per week. Volunteers who are interested in distributing food sign up for one week out of the month; all of the shelf-stable food is packed before hand and the volunteer only needs to take down names and hand out bags. This keeps the atmosphere quite, and is an innovative solution for ministries that may be struggling to recruit enough volunteers.

This system is possible because Sandy only accepts shelf stable foods, unlike some pantries which have to distribute perishable donations as soon as possible. This still leaves a wide variety of nutritious and filling foods for the pantry to distribute but alleviates the pressure of dealing with foods that need refrigeration. Most of the food at the Streams' pantry is also bought by Sandy with monetary donations instead of relying on the congregation to donate food directly. Sandy says that the congregation is very generous, but many members are unsure of the best foods to buy and don’t want to donate items that aren’t useful. Almost every feeding ministry I have come across relies heavily on donations from the community and congregation— that way we don’t have to worry about finances or asking to take up a line of the church’s budget— but this alternative works quite well at Streams. Sandy keeps an eye out for sales and coupons and buys food in bulk. In an unused Sunday school room, she keeps all of these foods sorted on shelves so that she can tell, at a glance, when the pantry needs more of a certain item.

After buying large bags of rice, flats of peanut butter, cases of pasta sauce, and the like, Sandy turns the stock room over to one of her volunteers. He comes in through the month and packs up all the bags, estimating how many of each size to make. He also breaks down the sacks of rice into manageable, single person portions in sandwhich bags.

Pantry storage room

This led me to ask Sandy about where the pantry sits financially; I am always curious about how ministries procure the funding that empowers their work. Sandy said all of the money they receive from the congregation comes through direct giving. The pantry doesn’t receive a portion of the Sunday morning offering or a line in the budget; they are completely supported by congregants who make a point to give specifically to their ministry. This is a wonderful reminder to church members everywhere who give to their feeding ministries: even a small donation makes a measurable difference for your food pantry. Even a gift that might feel insignificant is amplified when combined with the generosity of a whole congregation, and even a few dollars allows more food to go to someone who needs it.

Most food pantries see fairly reliable trends— more families come at the end of the month when SNAP benefits run out, or at the beginning of the month when a panty’s monthly limit resets. According to Sandy, the pantry at Streams doesn’t seem to follow any specific rhyme or reason; some weeks as few as 15 families show up for food, and over 30 show up the next week. Sandy’s system of pre-packed shelf stable foods allows the pantry to be able to hold onto food that doesn’t get given out one week and to assemble enough extras to meet an unexpected demand.

One thing I did not get the chance to see was Caring Ministries Grocery Rescue. Caring Ministries is a family service center in Tucson, and they run a grocery rescue program. The group picks up various discarded foods from stores around the city, like items approaching their expiration dates, surplus, or items with flaws. On the last Saturday of the month, Caring Ministries sets up shop in the parking lot at Streams in the Desert and distributes fresh groceries to everyone who needs them. This allows families in need to access nutritionally rich fruits, vegetables, and meat, as well as products like bread and eggs, that are harder to rely on from food pantries. This also keeps a good deal of food from ending up as waste.

I was quite impressed by the food pantry at Streams in the Desert. It seems the Sandy has found a way around almost every problem that befalls smaller feeding ministries and has made her ministry a staple on the community in the process. When I asked her what larger trends she saw at the pantry, she said that not as many people are in need as during the height of the pandemic. However, she’s seeing more and more people affected by the ever-rising cost of groceries and living expenses. She said that her biggest worry is the incremental inflation she sees when she goes shopping for her own groceries.

“I just don’t know how people are surviving right now,” she tells me.

This underscores an ever-present truth of feeding ministries: putting food on people’s tables is incredibly important; it keeps families afloat and healthy until their situation can improve. However, the unspoken reality is that giving people food to get through the month does not treat the factors that leave them hungry in the first place; it does not deal with the gaps in education that lead to workforce inequality, or combat incremental inflation, or bring fresh groceries to impoverished neighborhoods.

Luckily, this neighborhood has Sandy and the food pantry at Streams in the Desert Lutheran Church to rely on while we continue to advocate for a world where no one has to go hungry.

In Christ’s Love,

Autumn

“He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.’” John 21:17