With a never ending need for food pantries and soup kitchens in the area, a new pantry has opened just as others are shutting down due to church and school closures.
FALL RIVER — With a never ending need for food pantries and soup kitchens in the area, a new pantry has opened just as others are shutting down due to church and school closures.
The new Angels Anonymous Food Pantry, 231 Weaver St., just finished its second month of providing free food for those in need.
Pantry chairman Tony Abreu said the group of eight board members and hundreds of volunteers opened the food pantry after starting out with a mobile pantry that offered food in local parks. It also hosted free Thanksgiving dinners.
Next, it was on to high rise apartment buildings.
“We wanted to target different neighborhoods,” Abreu said. “In the last year, we’ve built up a lot of momentum.”
Abreu said the group sought a permanent location in order to help more people in need. It also worked to purchase refrigerators and other necessities for the pantry.
In June, the brand new food pantry fed roughly 250 people in 110 households.
“I think this month will be a bigger month,” Abreu said.
After working with the Boston Food Bank, the group secured 5,000 pounds of food, including canned goods, dry goods, eggs, cheese, meat and produce.
Clients “shop” at the food pantry and often leave with 30 to 40 free grocery items.
Abreu said the space is free. Fundraising pays for utilities. He said they want to stay a year ahead so they’re never in danger of closing.
“We’re super excited,” Abreu said. “We have a lot of things in the works.”
The group still feeds those in high-rises, too. It visits each of the buildings during the summer and offers a free cooked meal, some free groceries and Bingo to residents.
As Angels Anonymous begins its new venture, other food pantries, along with soup kitchens are in danger of closing, or already have closed.
The Sacred Heart Soup Kitchen closed along with the church, and now it will lose its location at St. Bernadette’s Church, 529 Eastern Ave., offering its last Mass on Aug. 5.
Polly Feitelberg, a soup kitchen organizer at St. Bernadette’s, said the last hot meal will be served on Monday, July 30. It typically serves roughly 100 people.
The food pantry at the church however, will continue for the foreseeable future.
“There’s a plethora of volunteers that want to continue the panty,” Feitelberg said. “It appears it will stay open.”
The Westport Food Pantry at the Westport Middle School closed recently because the building is being razed to make way for a new facility. The pantry fed up to 200 families each month. A new location has not been found.
Abreu said it’s “disheartening” to see food pantries and soup kitchens close.
“It does worry me,” Abreu lamented.
He said all are welcome to the Angels Anonymous Food Pantry, including people from neighboring towns. He said the group would like to offer a mobile food pantry in Westport, as well.
“We’re trying to get as many people (as possible) to come over to ours,” he said.
The Angels Anonymous group started four years ago as supporters of recalling former Mayor William Flanagan. The group — along with some opposed to the recall — found they shared a common goal of wanting to better the city of Fall River.
“We saw the passion people had in Fall River to stand behind a certain issue,” Abreu said. “We wanted to garner that energy.”
Their first order of business was cleaning up city neighborhoods, but it didn’t end there.
“We were known as the group who cleans,” Abreu said. “We wanted to do more.”
Angels Anonymous Food Pantry is open the third weekend of each month, both Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to noon.
Email Deborah Allard at dallard@heraldnews.com
