$500K in grants help multiply food pantries' impact

Yahoo

20-05-2025

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The harvest is plentiful for area food pantries, and the workers are too — but too often until now, the barns to store the excess have been in short supply.
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For a handful of pantries in Washington County that's changed, thanks to a federal Community Development Block Grant program that brought $500,000 worth of 'Food Insecurity' grants to the county.
'We've been praying for a walk-in cooler for a few years because we've got like 12 (small chest freezers) in here right now,' Mount Zion Baptist Church Pastor Cody Greene said Monday in Jonesborough.
Standing in front of a brand new 'Polar King' walk-in combination cooler and freezer, Greene said the pantry that served an average of 170 families a month last year saw several prayers answered when the local government let them know about the grant opportunity.
Greene remembers hearing an uncommon offer: 'Just write down what your needs are and we'll see what we can do.'
'We've been able to get a brand new trailer, they've ordered a truck and then this cooler behind us as well,' Greene said a day before the pantry's second of two monthly distributions. 'So it's just every need that we've had has been supplied in the last six months. It's been incredible.'
About eight miles east, David Smith of University Parkway Baptist Church had a similar positive story. He, too, stood in front of a just-installed 'Polar King' combination walk-in.
'This will allow us to really go to the next level as far as getting high-quality fresh and frozen goods and giving that to the families,' Smith, the church's financial administrator, said.
University Parkway distributes about 20,000 pounds to an average of 200 families in a distribution from 7-9 a.m. on the second Saturday of each month. Now they'll be able to jump when stores have perishable excess.
'Food City or somebody will call us up and say, hey, I got 20 cases of this or 30 cases of that, and can you take it, and you have to do that right on the spot,' Smith said.
At Mount Zion the typical number of families being served — every first and third Tuesday — has only gone up. The church keeps meticulous data, and the 170 families it served in an average month in 2024 was up 13% from 2023 and 53% higher than in 2020.
The pantry is as generous as possible, and the new trailer and freezer make accepting area supermarkets and farmers' generosity that much easier.
'We have a massive banana box crate that we're giving out just full of meat, and then we have another one with produce and another one dry goods,' Greene said. 'So being able to handle that supply has been incredibly beneficial for us.'
The creaking church van that labored to haul food and might not be able to haul the new trailer are typical of the shoestring operations at pantries. Mount Zion picks up surplus from Food City, Kroger, Earth Fare and other area supermarkets every Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Local farmers sometimes donate as well, Greene said. They also get an average of nearly 10,000 a month from Second Harvest Food Bank.
'We're pulling 10,000 pounds, so we needed something to be able to do that,' Greene said.
In 2024, the church squeezed 23,617 pounds of deli goods, 22,506 pounds of dairy, 11,693 pounds of meat, 5,366 pounds of produce and 4,109 pounds of frozen goods into its hodgepodge array of small freezers and refrigerators. The new equipment will enable those numbers to increase.
And for the growing number of families, the church is happy to be able to help.
'When they're in their cars, we'll just go up and talk to them and we'll hear stories,' Greene said.
'This one lady in particular has three of her grandkids, they've come to live with her, and she said last year she lost her job and she just mentioned multiple times, like, if it wasn't for this, she wasn't really sure how she would pay to feed them.'
It's one of numerous stories Greene said help make the church and the pantry's many volunteers determined to do as much as they can.
'Thankfully there has been a continual supply and we've just had that mentality of, 'we'll keep giving as long as the Lord keeps providing.''
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