ELLETTSVILLE — It’s a Thanksgiving miracle. The girls of Girl Scout Troop 279 have pulled it off.
Just a little over a year since the Silver Award-winning project turned invaluable community food pantry began, Pantry 279: The Pantry with TLC provided around 800 families — well over 3,000 people — with Thanksgiving meal ingredients Saturday afternoon.
The Girl Scouts, who often forgo normal teenage activities to volunteer at the pantry, had some help from about 20 to 30 volunteers from several local groups who helped prepare and hand out the boxed meal kits.
The pantry remained open for its normal hours, as well, providing a week’s worth of food for 90 families — 384 individuals — the pantry’s biggest day to date.
Thanksgiving meals — handed out in assembly line fashion inside Trinity Lutheran Church at 501 E. Temperance St. — included at least one fresh chicken, boxed mashed potatoes, canned vegetables and yams, salt and pepper shakers and cranberries.
The girls decided to undertake preparing Thanksgiving meal kits a couple of weeks ago, after they heard a local organization that typically gave out meals would not be doing so this year. So they put out the call on their Facebook page, asking for donations and volunteers.
Troop Leader Cindy Chavez said community response to the event was fantastic. Members of the Edgewood High School band collected food and volunteered to help with the distribution. Churches, businesses, other Girl Scout troops, the Ellettsville Boys and Girls Club and numerous individuals have made pledges of food and/or money.
“In talking to other pantries in the area, I heard that most people do not tackle the Thanksgiving box until they’ve been in this for 15 years. Then they start with 40 to 50 boxes,” Chavez said. “Definitely not 800.”
Chavez said there were a few bumps in the road — a clerical error turned 700 planned boxes into 800 families expecting food — but, somehow, they made it through.
“Everybody is really tired, but I think everybody feels very accomplished,” she said. “I’m very thrilled that this whole community, Ellettsville and Bloomington, came together to pull this off.”
Pantry 279 has served more than 6,300 households in the past year, with more than 22,000 people receiving free food because of the pantry’s efforts.
The pantry is open from 4 to 6 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and from 3 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. Pantry 279 allows patrons to fill as many bags of food as there are people in their household, once a week.
