While covering housing in Ontario, Street Roots photographer Celeste Noche discovers that food can be a unifier
While reporting on rural housing in Ontario, Street Roots reporter Emilly Prado and I visited two food pantries run by Next Chapter Food Pantry and Garden at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and First Christian Church. Our goal was to interview guests about their housing issues and see how food pantries provide aid to communities in poverty, but we also learned how the differences in access to food can reflect and sustain a sense of humanity.
All food pantries are not the same. From government-run versus nonprofit/religious-sponsored to the very methods in which guests can collect their groceries, the experiences can vary greatly from pantry to pantry.
Two things struck me the most when visiting these pantries: First, the diversity. While I was slowly learning about Ontario’s multicultural background and growing diversity today, it hadn’t been so evident in any places we’d been until coming to the food pantry. The span of backgrounds, ages and family sizes all spoke to the extent of poverty in Malheur County – the poorest county in Oregon.
The second realization came only after speaking to guests about what made the Next Chapter pantries different: How they can choose or receive their food can significantly influence what can be a challenging experience. While many pantries prepare boxes of food based on available products and family size, Next Chapter allowed guests to walk through the available stock and choose groceries themselves with the guidance of volunteers. And though the difference may seem subtle, having the ability to choose restores a sense of agency for so many guests who may be there because they don’t have other options.
In pantries where groceries have been predetermined, guests are forced to take home items they don’t need or even may not be able to eat because of dietary restrictions. These places can feel transactional, missing the emotional dignity of allowing poor communities to choose for themselves. But in pantries like Next Chapter’s, where shoppers can make their own decisions, guests bring their families to shop and choose groceries all together. They can choose what they do or don’t need decide how they’ll nourish themselves and their families.
While we met with many different communities in Ontario, our visits to the Next Chapter food pantries stuck with me because it illustrates how much thoughtful details can alter the experiences of people who are in vulnerable positions. Food as a unifier, not necessarily an equalizer, brings all types of people to the pantry. I chose to write about this process because in our hurry to “help” other communities, we can overlook important details like these. It might be more efficient or cost effective to prepare boxes for folks, but these guests said that being able to choose their own groceries made them feel human.
FURTHER READING: In rural Oregon, trips to food banks are the new normal
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