Food insecurity is a significant issue, impacting individuals and families across various communities. Food pantries play a crucial role in addressing this need by providing accessible food and resources. This article explores the landscape of food pantries, including mobile pantry options, specific examples of food pantries and their requirements, and initiatives aimed at improving the food environment within these vital community resources.
Mobile Pantries: Bringing Food to the Community
Mobile pantries are an innovative approach to combating food insecurity. Unlike traditional food pantries that require individuals to travel to a fixed location, mobile pantries bring food directly to the community. These mobile units, often trucks, visit convenient locations such as churches, community centers, schools, and shopping centers.
The structure of mobile pantries can vary. Some offer pre-packed grocery boxes filled with healthy foods, while others operate in a farmers' market style, allowing individuals to choose the items they need. Common offerings include meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, bread, and ingredients for preparing simple meals.
To locate a mobile pantry in your area, you can search by zip code to find your nearest food bank, which often coordinates mobile pantry programs. Many food banks also maintain online schedules for their mobile pantry visits.
Local Food Pantries: Examples and Access
Numerous food pantries and soup kitchens operate within local communities to provide food assistance. These organizations welcome everyone in need, typically without imposing strict requirements or qualifications. Here are a few examples:
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St. Peter’s Food Pantry: This pantry provides emergency food packages with the aim of sharing resources within the community.
Various Pantries: Many food pantries offer bags of non-perishable food items weekly, contributing significantly to addressing food insecurity in areas like New York City.
College Student Pantries: Recognizing the challenges faced by students, some institutions, like Trinity's SAFH (602 E. 9th Street), operate food pantries specifically for college students.
CommUnity Food Bank: Serving residents of Coralville, Tiffin, and Oxford, this food bank allows each household to receive grocery assistance once per week, without income limits or other requirements.
North Liberty Community Pantry: Primarily serving North Liberty, this pantry offers both food and clothing assistance.
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Iowa City Community Fridge: Operating 24/7, this community fridge encourages people to "take what you need, leave what you can," supplementing local pantries.
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Food Market: Held every third Wednesday of the month, this market offers staples like bread, canned goods, and cereal, often including items like frozen meat, baby wipes, and cheese.
IC Compassion: This food pantry aims to have fresh produce and meat available every week, with no restrictions on access.
Solon Community Food Pantry: Located at the Solon United Methodist Church, this pantry provides food assistance to the local community.
FIT Food Pantry: Addressing Student Needs
The FIT Food Pantry is a direct response to the State University of New York (SUNY) system initiative to provide students with immediate resources to combat food insecurity. SUNY and FIT recognize that the rising cost of attending college can make it difficult for students to afford personal necessities like food while also paying for tuition, textbooks, and art supplies.
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The FIT Food Pantry is accessible to currently enrolled FIT students (full-time or part-time) in a degree program. Students can access the pantry to pick up food based on their meal needs for the day. First-time users each semester are required to complete a brief intake form. After that, they can access the pantry as needed. A Food Pantry staff member may contact the student to connect them with other on-campus resources.
The FIT Food Pantry is located in Room A737 on the 7th floor of the David Dubinsky Student Center.
The Safe and Healthy Food Pantries Project (SHFPP)
The Safe and Healthy Food Pantries Project (SHFPP) is a PSE (Policies, Systems, and Environmental) change intervention designed to improve the food environment and food safety practices within emergency food pantries. The SHFPP manual provides tools to support the adoption of research-informed strategies likely to expand access and promote safe and healthy food.
The SHFPP encourages users to follow a five-step action cycle:
- Assessment
- Strategies
- Action Planning
- Implementation
- Evaluation
The project is implemented and maintained through collaboration between SNAP-Ed educators, food pantry staff and volunteers, and other stakeholders. This team assesses potential changes, including readiness and sources of food procurement. The tools provided help guide the team in planning policies and practices that change the food pantry environment in terms of health and safety. Example strategies include donor education, improvements in food layout or display, signage, procuring local food, and food safety and nutrition policies.
SHFPP targets food pantry clients in the food pantry setting, recognizing that food pantries are a SNAP-Ed priority setting due to the likelihood of reaching a SNAP-Ed eligible audience.
The SHFPP toolkit guides pantry staff and volunteers through a five-step action cycle to:
- Assess current pantry operations
- Review research-informed strategies and best practices
- Develop an action plan
- Implement and evaluate strategies to improve the food environment and food safety practices.
These intervention components provide the capacity and tools and help build the relationships necessary to implement sustainable PSE changes in food pantry settings. The self-assessment and action cycle are core components of the intervention. Proposed strategies may be adapted or modified according to pantry capacity and previously adopted strategies. The implementation tools can be used alone or in tandem with each other. While the SHFPP could be independently adopted, a collaborative approach engaging pantry staff, volunteers, and guests in addition to community partners is recommended due to the increased likelihood to support sustainable change and leveraged resources. The SHFPP toolkit is available at no cost online as a downloadable PDF.
SHFPP: Development and Evaluation
SHFPP began with a formative assessment. The results of this assessment informed the development of project materials and resources, which were then pilot tested by community partners with support from SNAP-Ed educators. Evaluation results of the pilot guided the development of the first edition of the SHFPP in 2015. A process evaluation comprised of key informant interviews and surveys were conducted with educators and food pantry staff/volunteers who field-tested SHFPP. Revisions were made to the first edition of the toolkit, and a second version of the toolkit was released in June 2018.
Pilot testing results demonstrate pantry capacity to self-assess current procurement and distribution practices and develop action plans to improve the nutritional quality and safety of food distributed. Process evaluation shows the recommended team process is key to successful implementation. Pantries have reported that policies helped reduce donation of foods of low nutritional quality. Pantry staff and volunteers report the assistance from educators helped pantry clients' and volunteers' accept changes.
Program monitoring data reveal that pantries adopted changes to the food pantry environment to expand access or improve appeal for healthy eating.
Evaluation Indicators for SHFPP
Based on the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework, the following outcome indicators can be used to evaluate intervention progress and success:
- Readiness and Capacity - Short Term (ST)
- Changes - Medium Term (MT)
- Effectiveness and Maintenance - Long Term (LT)
- Population Results (R)
- Individual Environmental Settings
- Sectors of Influence
Examples of these indicators in practice include:
- ST7a: Wisconsin SNAP-Ed educators worked with food pantries on the Safe and Healthy Food Pantries Project.
- MT5a: Food pantries adopted changes to the food pantry environment to expand access or improve appeal for healthy eating.
- MT5b: Policy changes were implemented in food pantries, including changes related to food purchasing and vendor agreements specifying healthier foods, and establishing or improving a nutrition policy for the pantries.
- MT5c: System changes were reported among participating pantries.
- MT5d: Environmental changes were implemented, including point-of-selection and distribution prompts and providing standardized recipes, decreasing shelf space, amount or variety of unhealthy options and including fresh produce in food pantry offerings.
- MT5f: Potential reach included individuals, which included a city-wide donor education campaign.
- LT8a: News articles were published about the Safe and Healthy Food Pantries Project in Wisconsin.
A RE-AIM evaluation framework is available to Wisconsin Extension colleagues to support program development and evaluation.
Additional Resources and Support
Beyond food pantries, other resources are available to support individuals and families facing food insecurity. These include:
SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program): This government program issues electronic benefits that can be used to purchase food.
Fareway and Hy-Vee Initiatives: These grocery store chains have launched initiatives to battle food insecurity, allowing customers to participate through purchasing pre-bagged SNAP-eligible food items, donating individual food items, or making monetary donations.
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