Food Pantry now a feature of NorthShore Health Centers
Volunteers Janice Holguin and Angel Goins fill a basket for a Food Pantry customer. SUSAN HAUSER/photo
When Duneland Resale, the former occupant of the building now housing NorthShore Health Centers, was put up for sale, a line in the sales contract stated that the Westchester Neighbors Food Pantry would be part of the deal. All-volunteer, all-donation community service had occupied part of Duneland Resale; the new owners were warned that the Food Pantry was going nowhere.
And sure enough, on June 14 of this year, the new and improved headquarters opened at the back of the health clinic, with plenty of room for car food distribution, all of that was donated and all is organized and distributed by volunteers. . The actual space was once used by Duneland Resale to receive donated items for sale, but has been rebuilt into a 20ft. x 60 feet of space, large enough to accommodate refrigerators, freezers and rows of wire shelves to hold groceries.
Now, notes volunteer and board member Nancy Veselica, “it’s air conditioned and heated. It’s good.”
Grocery boxes are distributed every other Tuesday. Thus, at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, September 6, there were already eight vehicles waiting on the side of the street on the other side of the intersection. Before long, there were enough vehicles lined up to fill two city blocks.
After thirty minutes, the cars, two at a time, were told to move to the side of the building at 8th and Indiana, where volunteers would place boxes of groceries and bags of produce in their cars. While waiting, the occupants of the cars filled out an order form, indicating the number of their family members and the number of each listed food they wanted. Inside the pantry, volunteers steered grocery carts down two lanes, picking items off the shelf for each order.
Every family coming to get food had already registered, either in person or on the pantry’s website, westchesterneighborsfoodpantry.org.
The website is new, a gift from local graphic designer Jessica Deiotte. She also designed the Food Pantry’s new logo.
Above: Ed Strudas and Ann Ballinger prepare bags of fresh produce to put in the cars. Bottom: Cars line up for blocks for bi-weekly grocery delivery at Food Pantry, 8th and Indiana. SUSAN HAUSER/photos
Food is available to anyone who lives in the Duneland School District and requests it. Council manager Dawn Ruge said 100 to 200 families turn up for the food distributions every two weeks. “The most I’ve seen is 256 families,” she said. “During the holidays and the colder months, it’s usually above 200.”
The Food Pantry has been in operation since 1982. During that time, churches, grocery stores, restaurants, banks, civic organizations, sports teams, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, firefighters, the U.S. Postal Service, and others organizations have made it a regular practice to donate food or funds to the pantry. Rhoda Farms on North Calumet Avenue is donating fresh produce.
An anonymous woman buys and donates over 100 dozen eggs every two weeks.
Additionally, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, Jewel-Osco and Strack & Van Til encourage customers to donate for holiday dinners for Food Pantry customers.
“The community itself is so generous,” Ruge said. “It’s amazing what a community can do.”
She noted that September was National Hunger Month.
Donations are welcome on the site. Volunteers are also encouraged to sign up for a shift, filling or distributing food boxes. And those who need help from the Food Pantry can sign up on the website or call (219) 929-5480 or (219) 921-3939.
