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Volunteers gathered in April to help unload a truck filled with
supplies (scroll down for more photos!).
To volunteer or make a donation,
call 298-2732
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The Pastor's Food Pantry
The Pastor's Pantry at the Noxen United
Methodist Church provides food to local families in need of a helping
hand.
The effort is part of
the community development corporation.
The pantry was founded when Rev. Keith Benjamin was at the church.
He earned his PhD. during his stay and his thesis focused on developing an
organization which helped the community.
When the food pantry was
started, there weren’t enough volunteers to keep a regular schedule and
the ministers donated the food whenever someone came to the parsonage or
if they saw someone who needed help. Pearl Race took over the
handling of the food pantry in September 2007, taking the mission project
of the Pastor's Food Pantry and running with it.
Things began with only a small supply of food.
Pearl began making phone calls to find out how to get bulk food for
a decent price, contacting local churches, local businesses like Curves,
and anyone who could help get the shelves stocked.
Other community members who
helped bring food donations to the pantry include members of St. Luke's
Lutheran Church, the Free Methodist Church and Maple
Grove, as well as youth groups like Cub
Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, and
Girl Scouts.
Currently, the pantry serves
15-25 families a week, averaging 60 to 80 families per month with an almost
50/50 ratio of Wyoming and Luzerne Counties. Careful records are
kept because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania keeps tabs on the operation
of the pantry and visits at least annually.
In order to receive a donation
from the food pantry, there are a few rules to be followed: The recipient can visit once
each month, must sign a form to indicate their household income level, and
must reside in Noxen, Ruggles, Kunkle, Beaumont, Evans Falls, Dallas,
Harveys Lake, or Sweet Valley. (These
guidelines were only recently put into place because the pantry was
becoming so overwhelmed by weekly visitors from towns as far as Glen Lyon,
Nanticoke, Huntington Mills, and Benton that there wasn’t enough for our
local families).
The pantry is open from 9 to 12 on
Wednesday mornings. People meeting all of the recipient
guidelines can select things off the shelves and pack their own bags.
The pantry has a few volunteers but can always use more. The
food pantry is a reality thanks to those volunteers and the generous
donors who keep the shelves well-stocked.
The Weinberg Food Bank in Wilkes-Barre is one example, having
recently provided 7000 pounds of food for around
$400 (monetary donations from the community help pay these fees). There
are also individual donors who drop off food at the pantry on a monthly
basis, and area churches have food drives frequently.
Youth groups are a wonderful resource as is the Mothers’ Day food
drive that the Noxen and Harveys Lake postal service has sponsored in the
past. Recently, the pantry has begun
reaching out to Lake Lehman and Tunkhannock Area Schools to see if
there’s any opportunity for seniors to focus on the food pantry as a
senior project.
To volunteer or make a donation,
call 298-2732
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