Remarkable Woman Winner: Austin woman feeds hundreds each week with mobile food pantry

Yahoo

01-04-2025

AUSTIN (KXAN) — With her hands raised to the sky, Jeanette Valdez Duran begins to pray over piles and piles of what she calls 'blessings.' She's surrounded by trucks and tables full of packaged meals, boxes of vegetables and fruit, and even fresh flowers — ready to be given away.
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'Whoever needs food — who's just hungry. You don't need to be poor; you don't need to be homeless. If you just need a little extra help to have something in the refrigerator, come to us,' she said.
Her nonprofit food pantry, Mobile Blessings from the Heart, feeds nearly 500 people each week, through distributions in east Austin on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Her goal is to allow shoppers the autonomy to choose the food and goods of their choice. All that's required is to leave a name and a zip code, so the nonprofit can keep track of where people are coming from.
'It just allows them to use that money towards something else — just to give them a little bit of help — to help them, you know, not worry about paying for groceries and how they're going to feed the people that they love,' she explained.
The effort began as a fully mobile operation, with Jeanette picking up food donations and immediately delivering them to those in need. Then, several years ago, she was contacted by Rose Smith, the CEO of Black Women In Business, about a truckload of donations. With no idea where or how she would distribute that much food, Jeanette said she prayed and went to sleep.
'That night I had a vision in my head,' she remembers. 'I saw Miss Rose, and I saw a house, and I saw tables, and I saw people everywhere — different people that I didn't know. And I just thought when I woke up, 'OK, the driveway. I got a driveway.'
She set up the first distribution event in her parents' driveway on Munson Street in east Austin. Initially, only five to ten people came. Over the months that followed, Jeanette said they 'outgrew their welcome,' as the line wrapped down the street and people blocked traffic. Thankfully, many of the houses on the street belong to different family members, so her parents asked her to move the operation to a large empty lot down the block.
'At first I was upset, and then I was like, 'Wait, why am I upset?' We're growing — we're feeding more people!' She laughed.
KXAN team members attended two different distributions at this lot in the spring, where people described Jeanette as a great organizer, a gifted public speaker and a great person, who helps people when times are hard and beyond.
She was nominated and chosen as the winner of KXAN's Remarkable Women contest in 2025. It's part of a nationwide initiative to recognize the great contributions women have made to our communities and honor the influence women have had on public policy, social progress and quality of life.
to explore the stories of Remarkable Women from previous years
Jeanette said she's driven by her faith in God and her own experience with hunger.
In the early 2000s, she spent six years homeless, battling addiction and not knowing where her next meal would come from.
'Every time I went to the 7-Eleven, I would ask if they could — if I could have their taquitos or their hot dogs or their donuts because I didn't want them to throw them away,' she said. 'Because we were hungry and we wanted something to eat.'
She remembers sharing this food with other people living on the street, until one day, a woman gave her a 'message.'
'I wanted some money for drugs, and she told me that God has a message for me,' Jeanette remembered, getting emotional. 'That I needed to go home because my children were love sick, and that they needed their mother, and that he had great plans for me and that I was a queen. And I was like, 'What are you talking about?''
She said that same week, three other women relayed very similar messages to her. She ultimately reunited with her family.
'I called my sister. She was there within five minutes, and I've been home since 2009 — and I just thank God for not forgetting about me and telling me that he had a purpose and a plan for me,' she said.
Jeanette believes that purpose and plan is to help feed Central Texans with Mobile Blessings from the Heart, and she refuses to take credit for its growth over the years. She instead points to her faith, her family, their volunteers and donation partners, which include the Central Texas Food Bank, Black Women in Business with Trader Joe's, Costco and Panera.
'I would not be able to do this by myself. There's just no way. And it's not a 'me' thing. It's a 'we' thing. It's a community thing. It's volunteers that have come together, that believe in what we're doing, and family that believes in what we're doing — that have come together to serve the community,' she said.
However, she's not stopping there: she's looking for legacy and corporate donors to keep the operation growing. She's also eyeing a building to serve as a physical distribution center. Having access to refrigerators and freezers would allow her to 'rescue' more food from restaurants before it gets thrown away.
'It's just loving on people, not letting things go to waste, and caring about others and just taking the time to ask, are you hungry?' Jeanette said.
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