I designed and ran a food pantry on my street.
The Little Free Food Pantry
A Mutual Aid Project in Berkeley, California
2020- 2023
I got this crazy idea to start a free food pantry in front of my house on my street, and it kind of took over my life! I had been thinking about the idea and making sketches of what it could look like for years.
I really wanted to design a kiosk of some kind that could be open 24 hours a day. It could be a place where people could drop off food, share food, and take food. The concept is basically: Take what you need, Give what you can. It's a lot like the Free Libraries where it's Take a Book, Come back and Leave a Book.
It turned into a part time job and I ran it for three years. I wrote letters to local businesses and food banks to ask them for food donations (most people said Yes) and ran food drives in my neighborhood that were quite successful. If you would like to take a look at some photos and notes from people who used it, I made a little website for it. I used to stock it three times a day. I was obsessed. Thankfully, I partnered up with amazing organizations that offered to give us food. A LOT of food. At first I was just buying food with my own money. I would go to Trader Joe's and just load up on stuff that I knew people would want.
I met so many amazing people over the years who were donating food, or using it daily. It was a hub. A place where I met my neighbors and lots of people who made the trek to drop off food.
I learned a lot about food insecurity. It was incredible to see it in action for three years. People came by bike, car and on foot to donate or to take food home.
I made a daily commitment to stock it, clean it and pick up large quantities of bread and food donations to share with anyone who needed food. I asked the infamous ACME Bread Company to donate bread and we would pick up bread every Wednesday. That was Bread Day and we made a lot of people in the neighborhood very happy by providing delicious bread that would have been thrown away.
I had to eventually close the pantry so I could focus on a book project. It was just time to close it. Now I volunteer at a local food bank twice a week and we give out 4 bags of groceries to 300 families every week. It's busy. I am the first point of contact and I am responsible for checking people in. I love meeting everyone and I just love doing this job. It's not as stressful as running a food pantry myself. The people who I work with and who manage it are Angels. And the food is high quality! So I feel proud of this work and the project I am supporting now.
I collected notes from neighbors and posted photos on a website that I made about the project. I am very grateful to the businesses and organizations we partnered with over the years. It was quite an experience to do this. I learned a lot.
