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No. 15 Vol. 6
www.cedargroveveronanews.com
June 2017
Verona Food Pantry Teams Up With Mobile Food Stand To Deal With Hunger Head On
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By Stefanie Sears he Montclair Community Farms (MCF) Coalition’s goal is to sell produce at affordable prices to Montclair seniors and is now expanding to local food pantries in order to bring fresh produce to seniors and others in need. The MCF’s Mobile Farm Stand will be joining forces once again with the Verona Food Pantry at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, which is open on the fourth Saturday of every month, by selling fresh seasonal produce on their grounds. The stand will be available in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit parking lot from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on July 22, Aug. 26, Sept. 23, and Oct. 28. Each shopper will be given a $5 voucher to use for purchase. The representative from Montclair Community Farms organizes the money spent and the church
pays for the produce bought by the parking lot shoppers with donations made to the food pantry. “It is a great way for us to be able to provide our shoppers with healthy options, which has been of interest to our parish members,” explains Rev. Jerry Racioppi. One third of the food pantry shoppers mainly come from the Verona-Cedar Grove area, but it also receives patrons from Bloomfield and Montclair as well. The Verona Food Pantry began on April 23, 2016 as a dream of the congregation’s Outreach Committee to provide food to the hungry in town, the need for which was determined through research achieved with the Verona Department of Health representative Connie Pfieffer. After planning and meeting with another food pantry, St. Agnes in Little Falls, the
committee geared towards an opening in 2016. A parishioner provided funds in 2015 to renovate an old kitchen space and provide storage space and on opening day, 18 shoppers came to patronize. “Our target audience is Verona-Cedar Grove and surrounding towns, but we currently do not turn anyone away,” explains Racioppi. “We ask our shoppers only two questions: a. what is your zip code; b. how did you hear about us? This helps us understand a little about our shoppers, but allows us to maintain their anonymity. The congregation stressed the importance of people’s confidentiality from the beginning of the planning for this ministry. We do everything we can to offer that confidentiality. Because we do not currently receive any state funds, we are able to limit our questions of our shoppers.”
Considering that the Verona Food Pantry is fairly new, it has faced both some growing pains and benefits. “We were originally opened for a four hour window, then cut it back to three, and now two hours,” says Racioppi. “Most of our shoppers are in and out by 9:45 a.m., and from that time until 11 a.m., we may see three to five additional shoppers. So, the challenge is being ready for the 9 a.m. open time and the busyness of the 9-9:30 a.m. time frame, but we have learned to manage it. We open our doors at 8:30 a.m. and give out numbers, much like a bakery, so that we call people in groups of four to five by the number they received when then entered the building,” explains Racioppi. “Our shoppers seem to like the amount and variety of cleaning supplies, which can be costly, that we offer,” he says. “I wish we
Mobile farm stand with Food Pantry volunteers Rev. Jerry A. Racioppi, Cardie Mortimer, Karen Gordon-El, Maria Force. Photo by by Marissa Blodnik.
got more donations from people based on the list we publish on our website, but thankfully we have been able to pay for the ‘shop-
ping,’ getting items to fully stock the pantry before we open on a fourth Saturday from financial donations continued on page 2