On Monday Sophie and I had the opportunity to interview Sister Mary from St. John’s Bread of Life Food Pantry (a different St. John’s than the one we visited twice.) With our advisories we have been to St. John’s many times. They are a small pantry run out of the basement of St. Johns Baptist Church entirely by volunteers. They are allowed to service New Yorkers living in Manhattan between 59th and 14th street, despite the restrictions on who they service and only being once a week they hand about 400 bags each week, and served a total of 38,151 clients in 2015. Having volunteered at St. John’s along with many other food pantries one of the biggest things we noticed was that other panties allowed their clients choice as to what food the got but St. John’s did not. We asked Sister Mary about this, trying to figure out what dictates choices like this that many food pantries face. She explained to us that the main reason St. John’s can’t give their clients choice is because of space. I thought that this was really interesting. Before our interview I would have thought that the reason for not having a choice food pantry would be cost, and the rick that certain foods simply would not be chosen, when in reality for St. John’s their small Manhattan basement is what keeps them back from allowing their customers the luxury of choice. Sister Mary also gave us a many different sheets of information and records one of which was the guidelines for clients registering or picking up bags. When reading over this sheet what I thought was really interesting was that most of the guidelines centered around insuring that people don’t take somebody else’s bag of food, not proof if income/need. One of the things that I think is so special about St. John’s is that while they don’t give their clients choice as to what food they get they really care about each and every person who comes to their pantry. Mary told us about on elderly women who can’t leave her house and used to benefit from a program called “Meals on Wheels” (which delivers food to seniors who can’t get to food pantries and kitchens.) but when the program cut back she stopped receiving food. Instead of leaving this women struggling to find food Mary decided to bring her a bag of food each month. Most food pantries would not take the time to bring a client and I think that this is the most special thing about St. John’s, they are willing to bend their system to make sure that they really service all those in need.
