Scott Smelosky from Share loaded about 2,000 pounds of donated food on a bus Friday morning. Then he drove to Gaiser Middle School, where parents of the school’s low-income students waited with empty shopping bags.
It was the first time Share’s mobile fresh-food pantry brought fresh produce, meat and dairy products to the school. The fresh-food pantry is a joint venture by Vancouver Public Schools’ Family-Community Resource Centers and Share, a nonprofit group that helps the hungry and homeless in Clark County.
Recently, Becky Parker from Share asked First United Methodist Church if they could borrow the church’s bus to try a mobile fresh-food pantry at a school with great need but that lacks a resource center. Gaiser fits that description, she said.
Vancouver Public Schools purchased a van to serve as a mobile Family-Community Resource Center and hired Nicole Loran-Graham as its coordinator. Graham and Parker decided to work together to make the mobile food pantry a reality.
Vancouver Public Schools’ Family-Community Resource Centers
• Purpose: To help children succeed by removing barriers and connecting families with available community resources including homework help, school supplies, health services, dental care, clothing, food, emergency housing, job assistance, early childhood education and more.
• Available at 12 elementary schools: Sarah J. Anderson, Fruit Valley, Harney, Hazel Dell, King, Lincoln, Marshall, Minnehaha, Ogden, Roosevelt, Walnut Grove and Washington; two middle schools: Discovery and McLoughlin; and two high schools: Hudson’s Bay and Fort Vancouver; and a mobile resource center.
• Assisted by 27 community partners, more than 800 donors and 39 faith-based organizations.
• Learn more at www.vansd.org/fcrc
School staff assisted the families in need. Each family could select three bags of produce, three packages of meat and one dairy product. In addition, they could select pet food, canned goods and some prepared foods.
Julie Myers and her husband, Jordan, were in the first group of parents Smelosky welcomed onto the bus. They filled their bags with chicken breasts and a packaged sauce to make teriyaki chicken, cottage cheese, salad fixings, potatoes, baby carrots to accompany a pot roast at home, a large box of mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy.
The fresh food pantry is “a godsend,” said Julie Myers, who works part time at a convenience store.
Her husband works at the Quarry Senior Living Center. After they pay their $935 rent and other bills, there’s not much left to feed their three teen daughters, Jordan Myers said. In March, their rent will increase to $1,100. They plan to move and get a roommate to help pay rent.
The food was donated by Share, Clark County Food Bank and Fresh Alliance. Share paid only $14.78 for the ton of donated food, Parker said. In a classroom, boxes of chicken breasts were stacked near coolers containing spiral hams, ground turkey, pulled pork and chicken sausages.
“This is really healthy food,” said Parker of Share. “It’s much easier for the families to access it at school, the hub of the neighborhood.”
The school has a pantry with some nonperishable food to give families in urgent need, said Kellie Budnick, a school counselor.
“The best thing about having pantries in schools is reaching families who don’t know about the resources available,” said Parker, hunger response assistant director at Share.
The school’s staff has the relationship with the students and their families, Parker said. “That’s why the school runs the pantry, not Share.”
Thirty-three families of Gaiser students receive weekly bags of food through Share’s backpack program. The mobile fresh-food pantry will visit participating schools about once a month, Parker said. The parents have to choose between receiving a Share food bag that week or shopping at the fresh food pantry.
“It’s security and stability for the kids,” said Sheri Backous, the school’s associate principal. “They know they can get food. Kids can feel if mom is stressed out if there’s not enough food for dinner. It’s a great way to serve our families.”
Sarah Rugh and her husband have three children enrolled at Gaiser Middle School, one at Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School and a baby. Their $1,500 mortgage payment consumes a chunk of her husband’s paycheck from his accounting job.
Highlights of Share Food Programs
• Provides 10 fresh food pantries in Vancouver district schools with Family-Community Resource Centers, plus the mobile pantry goes to some schools without resource centers.
• Mobile fresh food pantry: Beginning in October, Share asked to borrow a bus owned by First United Methodist Church, a community partner with Share and Vancouver’s resource centers.
• In 2014, Share provided 70,977 bags of food to more than 1,900 children and their families at 90 schools through the Backpack Program, and 27,172 free meals to children served through Share’s Summer Meals program.
• Learn more at www.sharevancouver.org
“We can buy some produce with our budget, but it’s never enough when you have five kids,” Rugh said.
Rugh’s bags were brimming with fresh vegetables, a package of boneless chicken breasts and a package of ground turkey. The food budget for her family of seven allows meat only once or twice per week. They eat a lot of rice and potatoes, she said.
She opened a cooler and exclaimed, “Ooh! Lunch meat!”
Parker looked around at the quiet classroom, which minutes earlier had been busy with families in need.
“Isn’t it amazing how quickly families come — and then they’re gone?” she asked.
“I know the families who used it were grateful,” Budnick said.
Smelosky, the bus driver from Share, loaded the remaining food back into the borrowed church vehicle and drove to two other schools, where parents waited to collect fresh food for their children.
The school district’s new mobile resource center also provided hygiene items to Gaiser families. In the future, Loran-Graham plans to use the mobile resource center to bring winter coats and school supplies to schools that don’t have a resource center.
