Sept. 27: Monadnock Area Food Pantry at All Saint’s Church closes Oct 1: Monadnock Area Food Pantry and Peterborough Food Pantry officially merge Peterborough Food Pantry new hours When: Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon Where: Peterborough Community Cente
Plates full of good food, children laughing and no one going hungry. It’s the ideal scenario for the Peterborough Food Pantry.
On Saturday afternoon, the volunteers, clients and supporters of the Peterborough Human Services Fund, which includes the Peterborough Food Pantry, held a backyard barbecue to celebrate 20 years of serving the community. And there is no plan to slow down, explained President Chris Mann in an interview Monday. In fact, the pantry is only going to expand, with a merger in the works with the Monadnock Area Food Pantry currently at All Saint’s Church.
“In the spring, the two people that have been running the Monadnock Area Food Pantry, [Meredith White and Gary Armstrong], announced they were intending to retire,” said Mann. “And it was a pretty logical next step to merge the two operations.”
The two pantries serve much of the same population, said Mann, but sprung up independent of each other – the Monadnock Area Food Pantry started by a cooperation of local churches and housed in All Saint’s, and the Peterborough Food Pantry working out of the basement of the Town House as its own entity until it was taken under the fold of the Peterborough Human Services Fund when it was started by then-Welfare Officer Jim Lenane in 1996.
With an era of leadership coming to a close at the Monadnock Area Food Pantry, said Mann, it just makes sense to marry the two.
The Peterborough Food Pantry, housed at the Peterborough Community Center, is wheelchair accessible, is in a discreet location away from the main town thoroughfare, and has ample space to accomodate additional food stock to cover new customers, said Mann.
Currently, she said, the Peterborough Food Pantry accomodates about 300 visits per month, and distributes about $14,000 retail value’s worth of food. Mann said she suspects that many of the people that get food from the Monadnock Area Food Pantry are already clients at the Peterborough Food Pantry – something that is encouraged – but the extent of the overlap and how many will be new clients will have to be evaluated after the two pantries officially merge. The Peterborough Food Pantry will be taking in donations that previously went to the Monadnock Area Pantry and believe that that, in addition to their own stores and donations, will be sufficient to cover the need.
The Monadnock Area Food Pantry closes its doors for the last time on Sept. 27, and the two officially merge on Oct. 1.
Mann said the Peterborough Food Pantry generally does a yearly customer verification process, which it will hold off this year until October in order to get an accurate sense of its new client base, as well as introduce newcomers to other potential food and bill or fuel assistance.
Also, starting Oct. 1, the Peterborough Food Pantry will be open on Saturday mornings as well as its current weekday hours, expanding its hours of operation from five days a week to six.
“Six mornings a week is a lot for a regional food pantry, some of which are only open a few hours a week,” said Mann. “And that just speaks to the need that we have in this area.”
On Oct. 1, the Peterborough Food Pantry will be open at the Peterborough Community Center on Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Food or monetary donations can be dropped off at the food pantry during operating hours. Checks can be mailed to Peterborough Human Services Fund at 1 Grove Street in Peterborough.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.
