Food pantry continues to serve through pandemic
The Faith Fellowship Food Pantry reaches more than 2,000 individuals in need each month through its warehouse and associations with other organizations, and now its leaders hope to spread the word to an even larger segment of the community.
“On any one giveaway, we can serve up to 500 families,” Jim Perry, pantry director, said, noting they give food out twice a month, “so we’re doing at least a thousand families a month out of here on busy months.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people being served by the pantry was much larger, he said.
“We’re averaging right now, with the pandemic, we average around 650 families a month. Typically, before the pandemic hit, we were serving over 900-plus families a month,” he said.
The decrease in the number of families can be attributed to several things, Perry said, such as stimulus checks from the federal government or people being “apprehensive about coming out of their shelters, their homes.”
As the pantry has adapted to the pandemic, Perry said more families have returned.
“We’re getting more and more because we’ve implemented what we call a drive up and drive through. You drive into our parking lot, we verify the number of people in the car who need food,” he said. “We check their IDs and then they drive to the back here in the warehouse and we actually load their vehicles.”
Perry said they also give food to
food banks and to Adult & Teen Challenge.
“Altogether, our numbers are around 2,350 individuals that we are serving, not all directly out of this warehouse, but associated with it in one way or another,” he said.
When the pandemic first started, the pantry closed.
“We were a little surprised when we opened. We thought we would be inundated with people, but I think they found other outlets for food, or they didn’t recognize that we were open again,” Perry said.
“Actually, we have no qualifiers for food. If you come in here and you say that you’re hungry or that you’re picking up food for a neighbor that’s an invalid or convalescing in any way, shape or form, but they’re in dire need of food, we will give you food,” he said.
Food is available from 9 a.m. until noon on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at the pantry, 3213 Highway 7 north, located behind the Faith Fellowship Church.
The food is given out by ZIP code. Those with ZIP codes 71901 and 71949 are served on the second Wednesday, and ZIP codes 71909, 71910, 71913, 71933, 71956, 71964, 71968 and 72087 are served on the fourth Wednesday.
“The only qualifiers are you have to come on the correct Wednesday, your ZIP code Wednesday,” he said, and must have photo ID that shows the recipient lives in Garland County, or Saline County bordering Hot Springs Village.
Perry said the pantry supplements “a person’s kitchen cupboards, we don’t give them enough food that they could get by on a monthly basis. I would say a family of four could probably go four to five days on the food we give them before they deplete the food we give them.”
“First off you get a box of dry goods, they get ample amounts of fresh produce, they get deli items … and then they get a 15-pound bag of assorted frozen meats. They get shelf stable milk from us … they get bread and they get pastries,” he said.
Sam’s Club, the Central Avenue and Hot Springs Village Walmarts and Brookshire’s all support the food pantry, he said.