Food Pantries Are Where The Action’S At Commitment And Compassion Are The Hallmarks Of Outlets

If you’re looking for the heroes in the food bank story, look no further than the food pantries or, as they are sometimes known, the emergency outlets.

“They’re the real heroes in all this,” says Al Brislain, executive director of the Spokane Food Bank. “They’re the ones who serve more than 4,000 families and 13,000 individuals a month.”

The food bank supports a network of 21 pantries in Spokane County and another six in Kootenai County in North Idaho. The pantries are on the front lines in the war on hunger. Between June, 1997, and June, 1998, theyhanded out approximately three million pounds of food, two-thirds of which came through the Spokane Food Bank.

Each of them is an independent, non-profit agency, often operated by a church or by a consortium of churches or under the aegis of a large nonprofit such as St. Vincent De Paul.

And despite the growing importance of other kinds of programs, the outlets remain the food bank’s first priority, Brislain said.

Most of the food distributed by the outlets is donated - 28 percent comes from community food drives - but the outlets are also able to purchase food at dramatically reduced costs.

The outlets are financially self-supporting and, like the balance of the food-banking system rely heavily on volunteers.

“Eighty percent of the outlets are volunteer-driven,” Brislain said. “The rest are like the Food Bank - they may have some paid staff, but they wouldn’t exist without the volunteers.

“If the volunteers walked away from food banking, we would collapse.”

Most volunteer out of “a commitment to serve,” he said. “I think it’s that simple. They like the fact that it’s tangible, that the clients walk away with a bag of groceries. With so many programs, you wonder if the money went where it was supposed to go, but here you can see that it goes into kids’ stomachs.

“That’s where their heart is - in making sure the kids are fed.”

In some neighborhoods, serving in the pantry is seen simply as “neighbors helping neighbors,” said Brislain. “Those people don’t see themselves as part of a big system; they see it as helping their neighbors, and that’s great.”

The pantry system is comprised of a patchwork-quilt of outlets that has been built up over some 25 years. In the early days of Spokane food banking, outlets sprang upPantries/ with scant regard to need, and often were organized based on the availability of volunteers. But as the system matured, efforts were made to place pantries strategically, in neighborhoods where the poor live. Since recipients often lack reliable transportation, outlet placement is critical and, today, well-placed pantries cover the county.

Each outlet operates under its own bylaws and has its own way of getting things done. But they all agree to work within the parameters established by the Spokane Food Bank, particularly in terms of food handling and storage practices, record keeping and the proper management of resources.

Food bankers are fond of noting that their safety and health standards are higher than the standards of the industry at large.

“We must have high standards,” Brislain says, “in order to earn the trust of the food industry. There’s too much on the line for companies like Kellogg’s and Pillsbury to have us handing out unsafe food.”

Low-income residents of the Spokane Valley have been served by the Valley Food Bank since the early 1970s.

Today, the Valley Food Bank is known for the cooking classes it offers clients.

“They’re our favorites, our success story,” said Barb Bennett, manager and soon-to-be executive director.

“We have been holding them going on three years now, and they have always been successful.”

Outlets and cooking classes are a natural fit - the absence of basic culinary skills shackles many low-income households to high-cost, low-nutrition prepared foods - but few agencies have figured out how to make them work.

Seventh-Day Adventist-sponsored food banks run successful cooking programs, and so does the Valley Food Bank.

“Our surveys pointed up that people weren’t using some of the food because they didn’t know how to prepare it,” Bennett said; “pinto beans, rice, peas, lentils, and even the infamous corn meal.”

Infamous, she said, because “it has always seemed to be a government commodity and nobody knew what to do with it.”

Now the foods that couldn’t be given away goes first, because, thanks to the classes, clients know how to use them to stretch their food budgets.

“We’re three years out, and we still have people who need to come to our classes and who want to go,” Bennett said. “Once we get them into the class, we have no problem getting them to complete it.”

Bennett describes weekly classes that are part cooking, part therapy session, part social gathering.

“It’s not just cooking - it gives our clients an opportunity to network, too. Many of our clients do not have a social life, and no money to go out. Many have no network of friends and family to fall back on.”

Cooking is a creative outlet, she said. “Our clients are always discovering new ways to use the food; the classes are an outlet for their creativity.”

The six-week course is taught by a Sue Armstrong, a licensed instructor employed by the Washington State University County Extension Service. Classes are held in a kitchen funded by the Sunrise Rotary and underwritten by an anonymous Valley donor.

The Valley Food Bank is housed in the Valley Center, a full-service community center that takes a holistic approach to the needs of the poor.

“We encourage our clients to use the other services at the center,” Bennett said. “The center offers classes in money management and how to search for a home, and in July, they will begin a self-esteem class.”

Bennett previously worked as a bookkeeper, receptionist and secretary for a variety of small businesses and first volunteered at the Valley Food Bank six years ago.

“I just came in wanting to volunteer and, fortunately, they needed someone.”

She has sorted food, stocked shelves, toted food to waiting trucks, interviewed clients and gathered day-old bread from local stores.

“I even made the mistake of letting them know I knew how to work a plunger and a snow shovel.”

When the previous manager quit to go to school, Bennett submitted her resume along with other candidates and got the job. Bennett assumes the full-time executive director’s job on July 1, at which time she also becomes the outlet representative on the board of directors of the Spokane Food Bank.

“All the outlets meet once a month to discuss our common concerns and issues. Then, I take the issues that concern the outlets to the board.”

Bennett also is a member of the Spokane Food Bank’s Program Committee, the committee that interfaces most directly with the outlets.

Food banking has added a dimension to her life that she would not have found without it, she said.

“I really belong at the food bank. I have many happy stories to tell.”

Our Place is an emergency outreach facility located on North Elm St. on Spokane’s near-North Side It was founded in August, 1987, by a consortium churches. Today, eight churches - six of them from the North Side - support Our Place.

Sister Marsha Schrapps, SNJM, a Holy Names nun, has run Our Place for four years, having first served as a volunteer for a year.

“Our Place was started by a group of pastors in the West Central neighborhood who were being besieged by people coming at all hours of the day and night asking for food, for money, for bus tokens to get to work. Whatever they needed,” Sister Marsh said.

“One church had a coffee pot and one had a copy machine, and they got together and rented this house from the Episcopal diocese for $320 a month and that’s how it started.”

Today, Our Place serves needy folks in the neighborhood with a food pantry and a clothes bank, and tries to help out other ways, as well.

“We’re really an emergency outlet for whatever we can offer,” said Sister Marsha. “The big thing is food, then clothing. We also do medical prescriptions on a limited basis - even over-the-counter medications. Some people don’t even have cough drops or aspirin at home in the medicine cabinet.”

When it can, Our Place helps out with the utilities and with transportation.

“One of our goals as a community of Holy Names Sisters is we have a special concern for the poor and the disadvantaged,” said Sister Marsha, “and this certainly fits into that.”

In the five years that she has been involved with food banking, said Sister Marsha, she has seen a significant shift in the lives of recipients.

“Many more people are working and they feel good about it. But on minimum wage you cannot make it. Even though they are working a full-time job they struggle. They tell me how much they make and how much they pay out in rent, and it doesn’t add up.”

The majority of the clients she serves receive Washington State welfare, known as GAU (for general assistance unemployable), or social security benefits.

“The majority are still getting food stamps, but they’ve been cut so much that they’re not much help.”

As for the apprehension that people abuse the food bank system, with its tendency to err on the side of the needy, Sister Marsha said, “there are people who do take advantage of the system. They’re the ones with four different names and four different address, and they do make you feel bad.”

But the cheaters are few and far between, she said. And food bank studies point that out. “Every study we’ve done has shown the ‘abuse’ rate at less than two percent,” said Al Brislain, executive director of the Spokane Food Bank. “The private sector and the government would be proud to have similar rates.”

Over three decades, the outlet system has proven an effective and efficient means of distributing surplus food to the needy - and for reaching into their lives in other important ways. As the amount of food moving through the system increases, however, the resources of the outlets have begun to be taxed. In the future, the outlet system may be modified to better manage the food being made available in the community.

There will never be a replacement, however, for the qualities of concern and compassion exhibited by food bankers such as Barb Bennett and Sister Marsha Schrapps.