Happy Saturday :) Only 7 more days until I go home, I am super excited! Today is HOme delivery day so I am at the Pnatry and decided (thanks Gaile) that it would be a good idea to post the text on here from the newspaper article about the program i oversee at the pantry. This way you don't have to subscribe to the Chicago Tribune :) Many Blessings, Shelley
Volunteers help keep pantries well stocked
By Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 13, 2006
In her two-room apartment, Jacqueline Burns waits every month for astranger to show up with two bags of groceries. Teeming with fresh and frozen foods, cereals and sweets, the brown paper sacks are vital for the 75-year-old, who gets by on $520 a month."Without these, I'd be sick all the time," said Burns, who mostly stays in a motorized wheelchair. "A lot of times I can't even go out."After carefully setting down the bags, the stranger will move on to another apartment of someone who, like Burns, barely gets by while others live nearby in comfort and affluence. Since 1970, the Lakeview Pantry has been feeding the less fortunate in and around Lakeview, a North Side community where need abounded when it opened its doors. Young professionals and rising property values have come to dominate the area, but pockets of poverty endure. Between trips to the yuppie bars or Wrigley Field, some may miss the less fortunate even though they live in plain sight, often in government-subsidized apartment buildings. In the early 1990s, the Pantry's board of directors considered whether it could do more good elsewhere, but decided Lakeview would need its help for along time, Executive Director Gary Garland said. Though few families live below the poverty line in Lakeview, there are thousands sprinkled in the neighborhood, primarily seniors and the disabled, who can't afford groceries, he said."The people we serve, they're for the most part invisible," Garland said."But they are there, and we suspect that this is a program that will be needed by
these folks for a long time."
Among Lakeview Pantry's core programs is home delivery, which began in 1989 with a handful of people having groceries delivered to their doors each month. Now serving as many as 130 people a month, the Lakeview Pantry is one of the beneficiaries of Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving, a campaign of Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Tribune Foundation Fund. The Pantry also helps feed another 1,900 people who pick up their groceries every month. Home delivery begins about 9 a.m. every other Saturday, with about a dozen fast-moving volunteers setting up rows of brown paper bags across the green and blue linoleum tiles in its storefront location at 3831 N. Broadway. As classical music wafts from speakers above, a wide variety of items go into the bags with strategic flare: pinto beans, frozen meals, dried paella, macaroni and cheese, eye drops and loads of canned goods--corn, carrots,tuna, spaghetti sauce and vegetable stew, among others. On this Saturday,the needy will also get sizable boxes of chocolates. "Everyone deserves a treat," says Debbie Mevora, 54, a Pantry volunteer for about 10 years. In the corner sits Shelley Boniwell, 23, a staff member who oversees the home delivery program and divvies up the driving among eight volunteers. Earlier in the week, Boniwell sets the menu from a combination of donations, purchases and a trip to the Chicago Food Depository. The depository is a clearing house that provides free food to shelters, soup kitchens and organizations like the Pantry."I try to do a variety of canned soups, vegetables, cereal and produce,"says Boniwell, who is on the Pantry staff for a year through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. "I try to get some frozen meat in there. We try to get all the food groups."
For someone who graduated from college a year ago and was never much for shopping or cooking, Boniwell says filling the cupboards and refrigerators of more than 100 people was intimidating, at first. "It was pretty overwhelming," Boniwell says. "But you get into a routine and it flows nicely." By 10:15 a.m., the volunteer baggers are finished, and Boniwell is handing out marching orders. Norman Shanker, 42, a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, gets seven deliveries from two buildings--on Sheffield Avenue(where million-dollar condominiums are for sale down the street) and on Fullerton Avenue. Two by two, he loads his 14 bags (two for each recipient)into the back of his black BMW SUV. Shanker began volunteering three years ago after wandering into thePantry while his daughters' soccer teams practiced across the street. He wanted to know if the Pantry needed help and was quickly put to work. "It's hard to believe, in an area of such affluence, that there could be this much need in your own back yard," says Shanker, who lives in nearbyLincoln Park. His first stop is a high-rise on Sheffield, where Justin Pulaski, 64,waits in the lobby in a motorized wheelchair. Pulaski is so excited that he doesn't want Shanker to take the bags to his apartment. He accepts them in the lobby, balancing one at his feet and the other on his lap. "This is really a very good thing for me right now," says Pulaski, a retired cab driver who lives on $623 a month. "If it wasn't for the Pantry, I'd really be stuck." With gratitude, he tells Shanker that he will have enough food to get by for two or three weeks."What I get from the Pantry is a tremendous help," he says. "They take a big burden off each month."As Shanker leaves to make another delivery, he pauses and says, "Well,that's good motivation to get out of bed at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning right there."
Volunteers help keep pantries well stocked
By Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 13, 2006
In her two-room apartment, Jacqueline Burns waits every month for astranger to show up with two bags of groceries. Teeming with fresh and frozen foods, cereals and sweets, the brown paper sacks are vital for the 75-year-old, who gets by on $520 a month."Without these, I'd be sick all the time," said Burns, who mostly stays in a motorized wheelchair. "A lot of times I can't even go out."After carefully setting down the bags, the stranger will move on to another apartment of someone who, like Burns, barely gets by while others live nearby in comfort and affluence. Since 1970, the Lakeview Pantry has been feeding the less fortunate in and around Lakeview, a North Side community where need abounded when it opened its doors. Young professionals and rising property values have come to dominate the area, but pockets of poverty endure. Between trips to the yuppie bars or Wrigley Field, some may miss the less fortunate even though they live in plain sight, often in government-subsidized apartment buildings. In the early 1990s, the Pantry's board of directors considered whether it could do more good elsewhere, but decided Lakeview would need its help for along time, Executive Director Gary Garland said. Though few families live below the poverty line in Lakeview, there are thousands sprinkled in the neighborhood, primarily seniors and the disabled, who can't afford groceries, he said."The people we serve, they're for the most part invisible," Garland said."But they are there, and we suspect that this is a program that will be needed by
these folks for a long time."
Among Lakeview Pantry's core programs is home delivery, which began in 1989 with a handful of people having groceries delivered to their doors each month. Now serving as many as 130 people a month, the Lakeview Pantry is one of the beneficiaries of Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving, a campaign of Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Tribune Foundation Fund. The Pantry also helps feed another 1,900 people who pick up their groceries every month. Home delivery begins about 9 a.m. every other Saturday, with about a dozen fast-moving volunteers setting up rows of brown paper bags across the green and blue linoleum tiles in its storefront location at 3831 N. Broadway. As classical music wafts from speakers above, a wide variety of items go into the bags with strategic flare: pinto beans, frozen meals, dried paella, macaroni and cheese, eye drops and loads of canned goods--corn, carrots,tuna, spaghetti sauce and vegetable stew, among others. On this Saturday,the needy will also get sizable boxes of chocolates. "Everyone deserves a treat," says Debbie Mevora, 54, a Pantry volunteer for about 10 years. In the corner sits Shelley Boniwell, 23, a staff member who oversees the home delivery program and divvies up the driving among eight volunteers. Earlier in the week, Boniwell sets the menu from a combination of donations, purchases and a trip to the Chicago Food Depository. The depository is a clearing house that provides free food to shelters, soup kitchens and organizations like the Pantry."I try to do a variety of canned soups, vegetables, cereal and produce,"says Boniwell, who is on the Pantry staff for a year through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. "I try to get some frozen meat in there. We try to get all the food groups."
For someone who graduated from college a year ago and was never much for shopping or cooking, Boniwell says filling the cupboards and refrigerators of more than 100 people was intimidating, at first. "It was pretty overwhelming," Boniwell says. "But you get into a routine and it flows nicely." By 10:15 a.m., the volunteer baggers are finished, and Boniwell is handing out marching orders. Norman Shanker, 42, a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, gets seven deliveries from two buildings--on Sheffield Avenue(where million-dollar condominiums are for sale down the street) and on Fullerton Avenue. Two by two, he loads his 14 bags (two for each recipient)into the back of his black BMW SUV. Shanker began volunteering three years ago after wandering into thePantry while his daughters' soccer teams practiced across the street. He wanted to know if the Pantry needed help and was quickly put to work. "It's hard to believe, in an area of such affluence, that there could be this much need in your own back yard," says Shanker, who lives in nearbyLincoln Park. His first stop is a high-rise on Sheffield, where Justin Pulaski, 64,waits in the lobby in a motorized wheelchair. Pulaski is so excited that he doesn't want Shanker to take the bags to his apartment. He accepts them in the lobby, balancing one at his feet and the other on his lap. "This is really a very good thing for me right now," says Pulaski, a retired cab driver who lives on $623 a month. "If it wasn't for the Pantry, I'd really be stuck." With gratitude, he tells Shanker that he will have enough food to get by for two or three weeks."What I get from the Pantry is a tremendous help," he says. "They take a big burden off each month."As Shanker leaves to make another delivery, he pauses and says, "Well,that's good motivation to get out of bed at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning right there."
posted by Shelley at 7:35 AM
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