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A new choice-style food pantry brings groceries to low-income Amesville residents
By: Theo Peck-Suzuki | Report for America
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AMESVILLE, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — The drive from Amesville to Athens can be cumbersome, especially for low-income residents, but it’s the only way to get groceries.
That’s why HAPCAP has opened a new choice-style food pantry at Amesville Elementary. On the inside, it looks like a corner grocery store: shelves stocked with bags of potatoes and split peas, boxes of crackers and jars of pasta sauce. In the back are refrigerators with cheese, meat and frozen fruit. Visitors can take a shopping cart and load up what they need.
HAPCAP community engagement manager Raya Abner said her organization chose Amesville Elementary as a location because there’s no other grocery store for several miles.
The new pantry is a scaled-down version of the HAPCAP for Health Market that opened last year in Logan. Abner said letting visitors decide what they take home has some advantages to a more traditional pantry, in which food is sorted before being given away.
“It offers so much more variety and families can choose food that is actually appropriate,” Abner said.
Supporters of the model have also praised it for giving individuals the dignity of choice.
The new food pantry comes at a time where demand for these programs is at a record high in the state, where officials estimate that approximately 30% of Ohioans qualify for it.
Thus far, the pantry has had what Abner describes as a “soft opening” serving just a handful of families. She hopes that number rises quickly as word gets out. She said the Logan market has on occasion recorded 80 or more visitors in a day.
The pantry is open the second Tuesday and fourth Thursday of every month from 4 to 6 p.m. Anyone at or below 200% of the federal poverty line can participate.