“Now,” he said, “I have to reach into my neighborhood, the grocery store owners or others who might have abundance of food that they need to get rid of.” Razvi said he is in the process of purchasing a refrigerated truck for COPO to travel around the city and pick up extra food.
Latricia Davis, pastor of the Community Church of Christ in the Queens borough’s Jamaica neighborhood, operates a food pantry once a week. She said she came to the summit in hopes of expanding her collaboration network. “We’ve learned that when churches come together, we can share resources and reach more people,” Davis said. Smaller pantries like hers, which serves around a hundred people a week, she said, feel the federal funding cuts more sharply than larger churches with bigger budgets. “Our pantry lines keep getting longer, but our resources keep getting smaller.”
To adapt, her church recently adjusted its food pantry hours to better accommodate New Yorkers working 9-to-5 jobs. “For everybody, there’s a sense of fear,” Davis said. “It’s not only just for people who are unhoused or people who are unemployed, but we have middle-class working people, families that are now on our food pantry lines.”
Winston Johnson, a member of the Rastafari community in Brooklyn, attended the summit. “We wanted to know what type of resources are here and whatever help we could get,” Johnson said. He said the summit for him was successful, as he feels more aware of resources, partnerships and food suppliers in the city like City Harvest and COPO.
Johnson’s community, which follows a natural vegan diet, operated a food pantry before the pandemic, but after being unable to keep its brick-and-mortar space, the pantry was forced to close. Now, relocating to a new site, Johnson said the community is eager to restart the pantry, which previously served more than 300 people. “The information today has been useful,” Johnson said.
Monrose called Wednesday’s gathering a “great start.” He said future summits may include hands-on training on how to run a food pantry, with participants divided by experience level, allowing more tailored resources.
“I believe the next one we will do, we will have specific training on how to run a successful food pantry,” Monrose said. “I think that the information is good, but I think we need to go down to the nuts and bolts.”
This article originally appeared here.
