Christ Central's New Ellenton food pantry gets makeover - Aiken Standard

Christ Central's New Ellenton food pantry gets makeover - Aiken Standard

STAFF PHOTO BY DEDE BILES Elijah McDaniel, left foreground, and Cheri McDaniel are the directors of Christ Central New Ellenton, which benefited from Food Lion's program, The Great Pantry Makeover. Food Lion provided a grant to remodel Christ Central New Ellenton's food pantry and also stocked the food pantry's shelves. Cheri is holding her and her husband's granddaughter, Naomi Milton.

NEW ELLENTON — Christ Central New Ellenton’s food pantry isn’t new, but it is improved thanks to a Food Lion initiative, The Great Pantry Makeover.

“The major thing for us is that we have been able to purchase some new shelves,” said Cheri McDaniel on Tuesday morning. “We had been stacking stuff on crates, but now everything is going to look more organized and neater.”

McDaniel and her husband, Elijah, are the directors of Christ Central New Ellenton. While she talked, Food Lion store managers and other employees put together freestanding shelving units and representatives of Golden Harvest Food Bank unloaded food from a truck.

“The holes in our floor have been repaired, and we have new flooring,” McDaniel said. “We’ve also gotten air conditioning, and we have more room because we knocked down two walls.”

Christ Central New Ellenton received a $4,000 grant from Food Lion to renovate the food pantry along with enough food to provide 10,000 meals.

“This is happening at an awesome time for us because we will be able to make it through the end of the month as far as food is concerned,” McDaniel said. “We have two more food distribution days in September, and there will be 60 to 65 families at each of them.”

The Great Pantry Makeover is Food Lion’s way of celebrating Feeding America’s Hunger Action Month in September.

Food Lion, which started The Great Pantry Makeover in 2015, is a grocery store company headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina. Feeding America is a nonprofit that has a nationwide network of food banks.

“Golden Harvest is one of the food banks that we work with a lot, and they nominated Christ Central New Ellenton for The Great Pantry Makeover,” said Kristyn Callaway, a communications and community relations specialist who is a Food Lion spokesperson. “We selected more than 30 food pantries to help this year.”

Golden Harvest Food Bank is based in Augusta and has a distribution center in Aiken.

“Christ Central New Ellenton does great work, and they are a really good partner,” said Teri Lawhorn, an outreach coordinator for Golden Harvest. “We knew their service numbers had grown. We also knew that they wanted to expand and needed help with that.”

According to figures provided by Lawhorn, Christ Central New Ellenton has given food to an average of 479 people a month so far in 2016. From October 2015 through Sept. 20 of this year, Christ Central New Ellenton distributed 117,823 pounds of food or 98,186 meals.

Dede Biles is a general assignment reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the newspaper since January 2013. A native of Concord, N.C, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.