“Can you bring me a food box?”
I get this call two or three times most weeks. I run a weekly food pantry in Lorain, Ohio, that’s a drive-up. Clients line up in the street in their vehicles, and when it’s their turn, they enter our driveway. We ask for a photo ID, ask them how many are in their household, then put the appropriate-size food box in their vehicle (assuming they made room for it, which they sometimes don’t).
As an all-volunteer agency, we don’t have the staff to make after-hours runs.
As the director, I often do it anyway.
They need me.
We were closed this week for the Christmas holiday, but I still delivered several boxes yesterday. I’ve been taking Kimberly a box to her family’s apartment not far from the pantry. She doesn’t have a vehicle, so it’s hard for her to come on her own.
Yesterday, I met her with a food box at the local homeless shelter.
Our clients frequently move. Last summer, I took a box to a man living with his wife and child in a tent behind an abandoned house near a convenience store. Later, he moved into an apartment building, then a room in a house. I haven’t heard from him in awhile. I hope he’s OK.
A busy year
In 2023, We Care We Share Ministries gave away food boxes to 7,585 households, an average of almost 152 boxes a week (we also were closed July 4). Our pantry is open for four hours on Tuesday afternoons, so that’s more than one box every two minutes that the pantry was open this year.
In those households, we served 27,713 individuals.
A year ago, we served 5,035 households (18,417 individuals), just under 100 boxes per week.
The need has skyrocketed, thanks to our economy.
Some of our clients work. Some are between jobs. Some have mental health issues. Some are playing the system, I’m sure.
We don’t care. We don’t judge anyone. If they come for a box, we serve them. If one or two are dishonest, that’s between them and God.
Do some take advantage of my willingness to deliver a food box? Probably.
There’s an apartment building 15 minutes away where I’ve delivered boxes to four or five single women, often at the same time. One of them in particular, Lori, is grateful every time I come. Another, Carolyn, feels entitled. She demands I come, and wants me to include or exclude certain food items (I can’t do that, since everyone gets the same box).
Most are grateful. In the drive-up line, people tell us all the time, “You have no idea how much this means to us.”
In the COVID years of 2021 and 2020, we gave away 3,824 (13,805 individuals) and 4,621 (16,809 individuals) boxes, respectively. We were closed for almost four months in 2020, mid-March to about July 4, during the height of the pandemic.
Changing gears
Before then, clients entered our pantry and shopped, choosing their bread, produce and other items. (We provided the frozen meat and dry goods.) We switched to a drive-up method when we reopened in 2020 to reduce physical contact and closeness.
The drive-up system also requires fewer volunteers – several of our regular helpers did not come back after COVID, which was a normal occurrence – so, we’ve kept that in place.
We also were open twice a week, but we didn’t have the traffic to maintain two open days. So, we consolidated to one.
In 2019, the last year before COVID when we were open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we served 8,915 households (32,411 individuals).
This year, we served nearly as many in just one day a week.
From walking to driving
I have always had a passion for serving hungry people, probably because I’ve never experienced it. I’ve never had to worry about where my next meal is coming from.
When we lived in Saginaw, Mich., my outlet for this passion was the CROP Hunger Walk, an annual 10-kilometer walk to raise money to fight hunger. One-quarter of the funds stayed locally (we divided that among four agencies that served Saginaw’s poorest) and the rest went to Church World Service, which used the funds for national and international emergencies and needs.
I found the local CROP Walk when we moved to Rockford, Ill. They had a wonderful group of leaders there, and I’m sure they still do.
In the northeast Ohio community where I live, the CROP Walk is a perfunctory exercise. There’s no passion in it. I wasn’t up for the effort to try to light a fire under people who didn’t have it, so I dropped out of that after one year.
A friend from church invited me to volunteer at We Care’s food pantry. I showed up one Tuesday unannounced (my friend was on vacation, so he wasn’t even there that day), and they let me stay for four hours.
They invited me back. I went. And loved it.
When the founder and director – also named Bill – couldn’t handle the job anymore because of physical limitations, he turned it over to me.
So, here I am. Ordering food, keeping records, applying for grants, networking at local churches and other places for volunteers and funds (we have a strong board that helps with this, but we need more of them), and providing the energy on Tuesday afternoons.
Expanding the ministry
We Care We Share has two other ministries as well, a clothing closet that also is open on Tuesday afternoons and a home for young people aging out of the foster care system and/or facing homelessness, called My House. The food pantry is self-supporting; My House requires more effort and resources to run.
We are experiencing growing pains, but we make it work.
Ministry is messy. It’s hard. It has successes, but it has failures too. We can’t get discouraged. We learn, we move on. We can’t save everyone, but if we can save some, we’ve done our job.
At My House. At the closing closet. At the food pantry.
I wish we could go out of business because our services are no longer needed. That’s not going to happen anytime soon. Indeed, the needs keep growing.
Onward and upward, into the new year.
For more information on our ministry, visit www.wecareweshareministries.com, check out our Facebook page or call me at (440) 714-2690.
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