Juanita Martinez is preparing to reopen the Wayne Township food pantry Wednesday after a five-month renovation, a milestone for someone who has spent 26 years working there.
But Martinez is mostly looking ahead.
Those new shelving racks? Martinez points out the wheels only because she will be able to move the racks aside and free up space for fundraisers, classes, presentations, any kind of gathering her fertile mind will dream up.
The new waiting area? Martinez wants to hold taste tastings there to encourage people to try some of the healthier items now available in the expanded food pantry.
And the new walk-in freezer?
"We'll be able to increase our capacity and how much food we can receive and store," she said. "We can store more milk. We can store more eggs and just keep restocking for the clients."
The pantry provides groceries to families twice a month, and then Martinez tries to find the answers to this question: "What else can we help you with?"
"To me, it's just a dignified way of serving people who need help in the community because those are the same people that help us when we need help," Martinez said. "We've had so many clients that have come back as volunteers and as donors."
Martinez has that compassion because she once faced some of the same financial struggles as the pantry's clients. At the time, her twin daughters, born with Down syndrome, were in and out of the hospital, and Martinez turned to a Wayne Township financial assistance program, but didn't qualify. Instead, an advocate connected the mom of three with the pantry and helped her give Christmas gifts to her children.
"I ended up working here, but I got help from Wayne Township when my kids were little, and so I know the feeling," she said. "I know how it feels, but we also see the stories, and we see the changes, and we see the difference that it makes in those clients coming in the door."
Martinez runs the pantry and the township's general assistance office as a holistic, social service operation because "food insecurity is a symptom of other issues."
So she works with volunteers to help families, seniors and veterans apply for food and heating assistance programs. She also invites people with chronic illnesses to a fitness and nutrition class taught by a registered dietitian who sits on the pantry's board of directors.
"People think poverty is what you see in movies or really destitute people. But in DuPage County, we have a lot of working poor," she said. "We have a different type of poverty. We have poverty where you can't pay everything that you need to pay and so you choose: 'What do I pay today? What do I wait for? How much food can I get so that I can use that money for gas?'"
Before the expansion, the pantry provided groceries on Wednesdays every other week to between 150 and 200 households in parts of Bartlett, Carol Stream, Hanover Park, West Chicago, Wayne and St. Charles. Though the pantry occupies part of the township's offices near West Chicago, it's a separate, nonprofit entity.
To remodel the space, the pantry received a $345,000 federal Community Development Block Grant administered by DuPage County. The township and donations funded the rest of the roughly $509,000 project.
"It was a big thanks to that grant we were able to expand this food pantry and just increase the capacity, increase the availability," Martinez said.
Martinez hopes to add more pantry hours and expand the number of households it serves by 30 percent.
"It will take care of a lot of people and help everyone out," volunteer Connie Szarszo said of the remodeled space. "And you can't pass up Juanita. She's the backbone I tell you."
Martinez doesn't dwell on that kind of recognition. Instead, she's looking ahead to the holiday season. She will order meal boxes from the Northern Illinois Food Bank and rely on donors to help families give holiday gifts to their kids.
"We have a very, very good community support system," she said. "When we reach out, they answer. Before we were so tight on space that it was really hard to really do a whole lot, but now with this space, and hopefully the volunteer base is also growing slowly, we'll be able to provide more."
