Northside RVA Food Pantry

“For I was hungry and you gave me food . . .”

by Charles McGuigan 11.2022

Food. The most basic of all human needs. Without it we perish. The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet, and yet one in every seven Americans goes to bed hungry each night, not knowing where their next meal is coming from. And many of them are children. Still, some major grocery store chains this past year recorded record-high quarterly profits. Corporate greed does not feed; it steals food from the mouths of babies. Fortunately there are groups like the Northside RVA Food Pantry that ensure nourishment for all. Made up of three churches—Ginter Park United Methodist, St. Thomas Episcopal and Saint Paul Catholic—this consortium was formed about five years ago, and recently I paid a visit to the folks at Ginter Park United Methodist. 

Every Wednesday morning, rain or shine, wind or snow, volunteers at Ginter Park United Methodist Church assemble in the Food Pantry and begin loading grocery bags with food, and then it’s out to the parking lot where cars drive up from ten till noon and accept these bags that will help feed families. 

On a warm autumn Wednesday morning just past eleven I arrive to watch these volunteers deliver food to the cars that line up in the parking lot. I speak briefly with two of them—Sam Wilkinson and Laurie Follmer, Northsiders both. He’s been volunteering fifteen years; she’s been at it for two years. 

In the basement of the church, I meet up with two volunteers who are working in the Food Pantry, filling brown paper bags with spaghetti, and cans of corn, tomato sauce and tuna fish, along with sundry items from bar soap to toilet paper. There are mounds of sacks filled with sweet potatoes in one corner, a tier of peanut butter in another corner, and a freezer filled with large plastic packets of frozen ocean perch filets. 

Kimberly, though not a member of the congregation, has been volunteering here for seven years; Daniel Perry just started here a month ago.  “I am getting something out of helping others,” says Daniel. “I also come here as well to get products when I run out of stuff so I know it’s not just the homeless who are in need; it’s everybody now. What they’re doing here is a God-sent lesson.”

In a nearby office, I join the man who serves as director of this church’s food pantry, which may be the oldest of its kind in the city.

It all started back in 1972 with a small closet in the church.  Shelves were lined with canned goods and dry goods, and anyone in need could come and select whatever they desired.

“Our sexton handled it to begin with, and it was for people who would show up who needed food,” Horace Ford tells me. “When I first started working here as a volunteer fifteen years ago on a good day we had 25 clients. Now we serve 150 households.”

A core group of 18 volunteers work at this food pantry, unloading trucks, stacking goods in the pantry, bagging the groceries and later distributing them in the parking lot.

Much of the food at the pantry comes from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) through FeedMore.  A truck load of food had arrived earlier in the day. “The food over by the window and the fish we got came in today,” says Horace. In that shipment, the pantry received 25 cases of ocean perch, each case containing 20 bags of six to eight filets of frozen fish. That’s where the orange mesh bags with sweet potatoes also came from. 

“We get a USDA delivery from FeedMore the second Wednesday of every month,” Horace says. “We used to get more than we get now.” A couple years ago the amount of USDA donated food was cut in half. “So there was less food available,” says Horace. “What we’ve had to do is buy more food and we use FeedMore for most of our purchases.

Those purchases are extremely reasonable. For instance a case of peanut butter containing 12 jars costs $1.17, and a case of canned tuna fish was just 68 cents.

Some of the food is donated. “River Road United Methodist Church in the West End has been very good to us,” says Horace. “They bring us food on a regular basis, they’ve also contributed money to us, and then several of their members volunteer here as well.”

And the freshest of all the foods the pantry offers to its clients comes from the church’s next door neighbor. “We also pick up produce from Shalom Farms that they donate, and that’s been a big help to us,” Horace tells me. “This gives us the opportunity to provide fresh vegetables, which is greatly appreciated by our clients.” 

So throughout the spring and summer months, fresh vegetables—from lettuce and spinach to tomatoes and cucumbers—end up in the grocery bags packed at the Food Pantry. Even now Shalom Farms is able to donate some leaf products and peppers, though that will wind down in the next couple weeks. 

Included in the weekly bags of food are various toiletries, and these are not donated items, though you wonder why corporate entities like CVS or Walgreens aren’t lining up to offer these products to this pantry.  “We have to purchase toilet tissue and soap, and we give that as well,” says Horace. “We buy soap from a Dollar Tree and the toilet tissue we get from Rutherford Supply.”

Horace, who spent most of his professional life in procurement with the State of Virginia, is always looking for new pathways to expand the scope of the pantry, and novel means of obtaining funds to keep it all going.

“For the past few years we’ve gotten some grants from our denomination, both from the conference level and the district level,” he says. “So we are not sure those grants will be available this year. We’ve got to be a little inventive on how we are going to get the money this time. I’ve got to make a presentation to the church council next week and suggest that we may need to put this in the church budget and fund it that way. I’m guessing we’ll need between twelve and fourteen thousand dollars.”

Horace considers the Food Pantry and the impalpable way it affects all volunteers, himself included. 

“People will come to us and they are very appreciative,” he says. “And it lands in your heart that you are able to help them.”

He tells me about two sisters who had been coming to the pantry for a good while now. Not long ago only one of the women appeared on a Wednesday morning. When Horace asked her where her sister was, she said, “Well, she got a job so she doesn’t need to come any more.”

 “It was nice that we were able to tie her over for a bit,” says Horace.

And then he mentions Jesus Christ and his ministry here on Earth.

“If you follow His footsteps then that’s the main thing you do,” he says. “You take care of other people. That’s the mission of the church. It’s nice to get together and have a community, but the church is not set up to be a social club, it’s set up to serve.  That’s what I think is important.”

The pandemic has heightened the needs of those who were already living on the economic edge. “It’s gotten worse with COVID and climate change has affected things,” says Horace. “I read just recently what is happening in some areas of Africa where there is such a drought that kids are dying. One woman was having to decide which child she fed and that’s because of climate change, not caused by them, but caused by industrialized countries like the United States. It shouldn’t be that way. We’re supposed to be a wealthy nation, so why can't we help our brothers and sisters all over the world?” 

And then Horace Ford says this: “We’ve been doing it for fifty years, and I think it will go on forever.” 
If you’re interested in volunteering or supporting the Northside RVA Food Pantry please visit https://ginterparkumc.org/northside-rva-food-pantry-partnership