Our pantry every Saturday at Gus Garcia Rec center on Rundberg is attracting more clients than before. We knew that recent changes in food stamps and employment might affect us and it has.
It certainly has been a busy month and we have had lots of food but there are some spotty areas that I hope to fix upcoming weeks. The number of people attending has stayed up in the 160s so is putting a bit of a strain on the facility at Gus Garcia. This means we are feeding around 500 people a week! People show up well before the doors open at 10 am then have to wait for the pantry to open at 12 noon. They are afraid there will be no food at the last (this does not happen here but close.) I am hearing stories of other places running out and turning people away. NOT US! Shifting from 130 to 170 clients in a week makes it hard to have enough of some items available until the end but everyone gets fed and gets at least a bag full.
What really makes all of this possible is the Army of volunteers each week. Some of them are behind the scenes that you never see, picking up food from our donors, sorting it and storing it in the racks, freezers and fridges each week. Some portion food into bags so more people have an opportunity to get a share. Some harvest food from home gardens and bring it to us or bring us bags of food from their own pantries to share with neighbors. These are unsung heroes each week. The people who help at the tables on Saturday deal with keeping the tables as full as possible, helping people find what they want and even carrying bags to cars. It takes around 70 people a week to put on this pantry. And every week we turn Carol and Jerry’s home into a public place to store and disburse the food with volunteers moving from room to room to garage .
We have had very large donations of milk and beverages lately and many boxed wrapped sweets. Our fruit and vegetable donations are down some-but we had 1500 lbs of potatoes of a few weeks ago! Some weeks we get a LOT of bread. We are still getting lots of canned goods including 3 wonderful donations from our Amazon shopping list. https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/2GLG05IXQKZRL Our huge SXSW donation from Austin Blessings Co-op is appearing and will help with the staples area too. We continue to purchase beans, rice and pasta each week to fill out our table. Thanks to the efficient opening of boxes at Costco we have received over 250 pounds of flour and 100 pounds of powdered sugar that got slashed and taped for donation.
Next week is the last week of our Spring fundraiser and we are at $595 of the $750 goal to get our match. Please feel free to share our link: https://givebutter.com/8S0Upv
Thanks to our continuing donors because without them there would be no pantry or food to share: Sprouts Farmers Market, Target, The Canteen, Specs, Costco (thru the Healing place), Lone Star Family Market.
Pantry stats for March (so far)
Total signed in 950
Total served 1765
Total Seniors served 264
Total Kids served 321
Total Unhoused served 603 includes outreach
Total volunteers 258