South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Little Free Pantries fill hungry tummies, no questions asked
On their walk home from school, Manouchi Eveillard and her brother, Kevin, were hungry. They stopped at a little cabinet under a tree and left with their arms full of extralarge boxes of their favorite cereals, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms.
A stop at the Little Free Pantry after a day at Boca Raton Elementary School has become part of their routine, said their older brother, Windy. They can take as much food as they like, no questions asked.
“They always want to stop here,” Windy said.
“But there were no sandwiches today,” added Kevin, 9.
The Little Free Pantry, a colorfully painted cabinet on a wooden post with two shelves and a mini glass door, was placed in front of the Salvation Army building this summer. Each morning volunteers from B’nai Torah Congregation, a synagogue in Boca Raton,
fill it up with jars, boxes and cans, and by evening it’s emptied by local residents who are hungry.
The pantry is a small testament to a big problem that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated: hunger. Food donations from the usual sources have slowed at the same time many have lost their jobs and are threatened with eviction.
“We are seeing a doubling in demand,” said Greg Hazle, executive director of Boca Helping Hands, a nonprofit that monitors hunger, joblessness and the medical needs of the poor. “We’ve added 4,000 families during the pandemic, and we have an increase in applications for job training and help paying rent.”
Feeding South Florida, which provides food through schools, community delivery programs and soup kitchens, has seen a 200% increase in demand since March.
The agency says 45% of the 1.5 million people aided during the pandemic are asking for assistance for the first time.
Feeding South Florida reports donations have slowed, and thanks to consumer hoarding, grocery stores have less to offer food banks. Restaurants are closing or fighting to survive and haven’t been donating their excess. Public food kitchens, dependent on senior citizen volunteers who are staying home, have closed or limited their offerings.
So it’s left to creative individuals to fill the gaps. Volunteers from B’nai Torah were supplying Little Free Libraries with books when Summer Faerman, the synagogue’s organizer of charity projects, realized the same type of cabinet could be filled with food.
Little Free Libraries are book-sharing boxes in public places that allow readers to donate books and take any that interest them.
“I took a picture of a Little Free Library in my neighborhood and asked different people if they could build some that we could put food into,” Faerman said.
Mini-pantries have been popping up around the country, with creatively decorated boxes helping the needy in Texas, Kansas, California, the Pacific Northwest and Toronto.
In Boca Raton, the first was placed on the Salvation Army’s property on Aug. 23. Now there are six, with four in Boca Raton, one in Delray Beach and one in Lake Worth. Eight pantries are under construction, to be placed around the state in the coming weeks, including one planned for Margate at the Legacy Closet, 6000 W. Atlantic Blvd.
Faerman said she places them, with permission of property owners, in neighborhoods that have low-income housing or schools that have high levels of poverty. A typical pantry has jars of tomato sauce, boxes of pasta, rice and breakfast cereals, canned tuna, fruits and vegetables and toiletries.
Reflecting the population of Boca Raton, the little Salvation Army pantry also had matzo ball soup mix. Someone donated a dozen cans of artichoke hearts, which were not flying off the shelves because the nearby Haitian neighborhood likely was unfamiliar with them, Faerman said.
A deluge of freshly baked goods is expected for Thanksgiving.
“They’ll be gone in an hour,” Faerman said.