Helping Neighbors: Family Pantry Brings Help Where It’s Needed

The Family Pantry of Cape Cod would be a great success if it focused only on feeding the increasing number of clients who come through the door every week — but that’s not enough.

Because its mission is to provide food and clothing to all who need it, the Pantry reaches out to help people, old and young, right where they are.

There are lots of people who can’t make it to the Pantry’s North Harwich headquarters because they no longer drive or lack reliable transportation. And then there are those who’ve never needed a food pantry before and had no idea the Family Pantry even existed.

So on a brisk day in May, a small team of volunteers stood outside at Nauset Regional Middle School in Orleans as part of the Pantry’s regional Grab-and-go food distribution. Anyone in need was invited to come and pick up 35 pounds of nonperishable food, a bag of apples and a gift card donated by Star Market, along with information on the services the Family Pantry provides. More than 150 people did so, and many more turned out at a similar event in Hyannis.

Part of the goal is to spread the word that food is available to people who need it, and the effort is working.

“We’ve had 517 new families just this year, which is crazy,” Family Pantry Executive Director Christine Menard said.

For years, the Family Pantry has operated a miniature satellite pantry at Cape Cod Community College, serving students, faculty and staff of the college. Until recently, it was housed in a large closet in the basement of the physical education building, but the 4C’s pantry is moving up in the world, Menard said. Thanks to funding from the college, a new pantry office is being built in the main Grossman building, right across from the bookstore and near the cafeteria.

“It’s going to allow us to have perishable items up there, and it’s going to allow us to serve more kids,” she said. It will open in September, just in time for the start of the fall semester. Over the course of a year, about 1,000 people take advantage of the pantry at the college.

And for people who have trouble getting to a fixed site, there’s Healthy Meals in Motion, the Family Pantry’s mobile service.

“If they can’t get to us, then we bring their food to them once a month,” Menard said. The program is focused on seniors and operates in coordination with the councils on aging in Brewster, Orleans, Chatham, Eastham, Dennis and Provincetown. “The bulk of them are comfortable getting to the COA, but probably not getting all the way up to us in Harwich,” she said. Like other Family Pantry clients, mobile pantry users choose the groceries they would like to receive, and volunteers bag them up and ship them to the council on aging for clients to pick up.

The demand for Healthy Meals in Motion is growing fast, Menard said, and the program recently expanded to include Yarmouth, which has a large population of seniors.

“We launched that in May, and that was a huge success,” she said. Another Lower Cape town is likely to join the program early this fall. Communities are added to the program based on hunger data collected by the federal government.

“We’re also a little more sensitive to the Lower Cape because they don’t have as many services as, say, Barnstable,” Menard said. The mobile pantry also reaches families with young children through the Cape Cod Children’s Place in North Eastham.

To contribute to The Chronicle's Helping Neighbors campaign, click here: https://capecodchronicle.com/pages/view/helping-neighbors-benefits-the-family-pantry-of-cape-cod. You can also mail a tax-deductible contribution to The Family Pantry, 133 Queen Anne Rd., Harwich, MA 02645, or call 508-432-6519 to donate by credit card.