According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 census, Ellettsville’s poverty rate is 7.1%. That’s 451 people, 92 of whom are under 18 years old. During the 12-month period before the survey, 256 people ages 16 and under didn’t work.
But those numbers don’t tell the story of need in Ellettsville and Richland Township. That’s according to Pantry 279 Director Cindy Chavez and the Richland Township Trustee’s Office Manager Katherine Rampley.
Pantry 279 serves an average of 2,300 people per month coming from four different counties: Monroe, Greene, Brown and Owen. Some travel from as far away as Cloverdale and Linton. The trustee’s office serves between 200 and 300. At both organizations, many clients are people on the edge of a financial cliff, and going to the food pantry helps them avoid falling off of it.
“If they didn’t do this, if one bad thing happens, they’re losing their house or their apartment,” said Rampley.
A significant portion of Pantry 279’s clients work full-time or two part-time jobs to make ends meet. But there are bills to pay – utilities, rent or mortgage, gas to get to and from work, car payments, telephone, and so on.
“Once you get done paying all that stuff, the money left over for food is negligible,” Chavez said.
Pantry 279 opened Nov. 2, 2015. Ten Girl Scouts in seventh to ninth grade established the pantry as a silver award project. It found a home at Trinity Lutheran Church through congregation member Marco Matavuli, the father of one of the scouts in the troop.
A second component of the pantry – a garden and orchard – remains in the works as one of the girl’s gold award project. She envisions adding six 6-foot-by-17-foot garden beds, potatoes, along the woods, and turning the woods into an orchard.
“We honestly knew nothing,” said Chavez. “We thought that after a year, once word got around, we might serve 30 people a week. Maybe. Week two, we were serving 30 (families) a day.”
Those numbers continue to rise. The pantry served 607 people its first month; 1,400 its third; and crossed the 2,000 mark by May 2016. All the while, an intrepid group of four to six volunteers has handled the workload, from picking up food at Hoosier Hills Food Bank to running the pantry during operating hours.
While they’ve plateaued around 2,300 per month, Chavez said she thinks it will go up again in the fall and winter.
“Part of the reason people slowed down is because we don’t have air conditioning, and it’s been a very, very hot summer,” she said.
Pantry 279, the Pantry with TLC, is open from 4 to 6 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays and 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. It’s also open Tuesdays 5 to 6 p.m. for senior citizens and people with disabilities.
“We created that day because the lines were just so long people in their 70s and 80s couldn’t handle it,” Chavez said.
People can use the pantry once per week.
Clients used to wait outside as many as four hours. Now, the pantry encourages them not to arrive until 3 p.m. for their safety. Some people fainted due to the heat over the summer. One woman had a heart attack. For those reasons, the pantry closes if the temperature rises above 105 degrees. It also does not open when schools close due to weather.
At the trustee’s office, the clientele is different. Because of its hours, the majority of people it serves are not working due to age or disability. Those who are working often have two part-time jobs with unpredictable schedules.
The food pantry at the Richland Township Trustee’s Office is open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“A large number of our population that come in here are elderly people, so smaller households, especially one-person households,” Rampley said.
Like Pantry 279, the trustee’s office uses a client-choice model to distribute food. That means clients are able to select the items they want from the pantry. Certain items available to them are limited by household size.
“It gives them a lot of control, which is really, really important for people who rarely have options, rarely have control,” Rampley said.
People are able to visit the trustee’s office once per 30 days, but they must live in Richland Township.
According to Rampley, there is a misconception that people in lower income brackets only want to eat fast food and are averse to cooking. In fact, there is a lot of desire for fresh fruit and vegetables.
“People want to eat well,” she said. “More than anything, they want to feed their kids well.”
She notes that people think of those the pantry serves as looking destitute, but that’s incorrect.
“They’re not dressed in rags or anything,” Rampley said. “It’s not like a Charles Dickens book.”
Because people are only able to visit once per month, a major priority for the pantry is consistency of product. Rampley fears not having meats or other basic items available when someone comes to the pantry. It’s especially challenging during the summer, when kids are out of school and needs increase and food donations decrease.
“Most of the kids we’re serving, by far, are on assisted lunch and breakfast, so you’re adding two meals for every child in the household,” she said. “If we could get donations up around June, that would be massively helpful.”
Both Pantry 279 and the township trustee’s office say a lot of people come in for a brief period of time before recovering from a lost job or medical issue or other temporary setback.
“You can come here and get a supplement,” Chavez said. “We’re not saying we’re going to give you everything. But if you can get enough to get through that week, that’s more money you can pay to electricity or gas or the phone bill. Not a luxury item but something else that you need.”
“It’s getting a little bit of help from a government unit that exists only to help them,” Rampley said for the trustee’s office. “That way, they’re not getting behind on stuff that doesn’t have wiggle room and compounding problems.”
With four to six volunteers, Pantry 279 is understaffed. Chavez said it is trying to recruit new volunteers from the community.
“Any volunteers are greatly, greatly appreciated,” she said.
As for the trustee’s office, it is looking for birthday cakes and birthday supplies after losing its stock to the Sept. 8 flood. Rampley describes the scene in her pantry afterward as “very depressing looking, Funfetti icing floating around.”
“Every kid deserves a birthday cake,” she adds.
The pantry also needs sugar, cooking oil, condiments and plastic bags.
“Everybody needs help sometimes,” Rampley said.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2016. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.