With hunger soaring in Sacramento, a McClatchy High senior offers a little help

While coronavirus continues to impact the economy as many as one in six Americans could go hungry, according to Feeding America, a nonprofit association of food banks. For children, that number is as high as one in four. The numbers are up 50 percent from 2019. Sacramento is no different, and some of the faces are new to food insecurity.

With food insecurity reaching new heights, a little help recently arrived in the Sacramento area. Small food pantries, called little free pantries, have popped in small cabinets in front of a few Sacramento-area homes. While the boxes have proven popular elsewhere in the country, they are some of the first on the West Coast.

Think “little free library,” but with food instead of books. Little free libraries are boxes located outside a business, in a park, or in someone’s front yard where people are invited to either leave a book for someone else to read or take a book to read themselves. They might look like an oversized mailbox with a window on the front to see the contents. Little free pantries follow the same general idea. Either drop some food off for someone who needs it or take what you need.

In 2016, Jessica McClard put out a box on a post in Fayetteville, Ark., with some food, personal care items and paper goods. She wanted the items available to anyone in the neighborhood, anytime they needed it.

“It took a little bit to actually launch. The project was built about six months before I planted it, because I couldn’t get a host to say ‘yes,’” McClard said in a phone interview.

No one really understood what she was trying to do. But within two weeks of the pilot box going up, there was another. Within months, little free pantries were popping up in other communities. Today they are found globally with over 1,600 mini pantries mapped on littlefreepantry.org.

“I really thought it could work, and it did. People instinctively knew what to do with the space,” McClard said.

Response and interest was immediate, and hasn’t waned.

Little free pantries isn’t a nonprofit or even an organization — it’s a grassroots movement. Anyone can put one up, and if they want it to appear on the map they sign up on the website. There are a few other pantry websites as well. Some hosts choose not to have their pantry listed. What started in the Midwest and spread outward to the coasts has gone global. Just this month McClard learned of a network of 150 pantries that went up in Bangkok. Spain was just added to the list of countries with pantries.

“For myself, it’s really been the greatest gift of my life. I do a lot of work related to the pantry, but there’s no way I could ever give this movement what it’s given to me. It’s changed who I am as a person in a really good way. I think a lot of [pantry hosts] would say the same thing,” McClard said. “I see it as a place that’s actively choosing trust and compassion instead of mistrust and judgement.”

The movement has been slow to reach Sacramento. A map on littlefreepantry.org shows the nearest pantry is in Concord; users have to add their boxes manually in order for it to show up on the website.

While there are plenty of food banks, the pantries fulfill smaller needs, any time of day. In some spots, a little free pantry might even be located outside a food bank, for those times between hours when someone needs to grab one meal. Some boxes are outside a school, where kids will have access to grab food themselves if they are hungry.

“It doesn’t matter where you go, the turnover is brisk,” McClard says of the use of the pantries.

In the past year of the coronavirus pandemic, fundraising for food banks has taken a deep hit due to cancelled events. Little free pantries are a way for neighbors to help neighbors, and also to raise awareness about food insecurity. Donations to traditional food banks are always needed.

But maybe you don’t have much to give — if there’s a little food pantry in your neighborhood or on your way to work, you can always drop off a couple cans of food or a box of pasta. The general practice of these pantries is that anyone can leave food in it, and anyone can take food from it.

McClatchy High School senior Ashley Jun chose to make free pantries as her senior project. She had seen posts on social media about people putting out tables to share food at the beginning of quarantine, but she wanted to have something more long term and weatherproof.

“I’m in the humanities and international studies program at McClatchy and we have specific guidelines linked to humanities for our projects,” she said. “So for me it was trying to figure out something that I was interested in doing, but also something that directly connected to humanities, because I thought that would be the best way for me to apply my skill set … and there’s nothing better than helping people.”

In order to fill the pantries, Jun incorporated a food drive through her neighborhood network on NextDoor before the holidays.

Jun also wanted to incorporate the element of STEM education because she plans to attend Stanford next year to major in electrical engineering.

“One of the things we have to do for the project is find a new skill set that you’ve never experimented with before,” she said, “so I found out how to create motion sensors and put them at the back of each box, so when the food at the very end is taken, it will sense the motion and it sends me an email.”

When she receives the email, Jun knows it’s time to refill that pantry. For the project, Jun asked four friends to put up pantries at their homes. She wanted to make sure they were spread out in the Sacramento area to help serve more people.

According to the River City Food Bank’s website, there are many types of hungry people in Sacramento - not just those experiencing it through homelessness. One-third of the meals they provide are for children. One in 10 of the meals go to seniors, whose fixed incomes often are outpaced by rising costs of living and medications. Many people requiring food assistance are employed but can’t keep up with rent and utilities and still get enough food. Many people are disabled, including older veterans. Many are grandparents that are primary caregivers for their grandchildren. Those are the many faces of food insecurity.

Pantries can be stocked with whatever is most needed in that location. While little free pantries won’t end hunger or erase the need for food banks, they are another tool to help. It’s a small way for neighbors to help neighbors, and a physical reminder to everyone that there are people in every community who experience food insecurity.

One of the friends Jun found to host a pantry was Reagan Mar, who lives in a house across from Mercy Hospital on H Street in East Sacramento.

“Ashley and her dad made the boxes, and her mom did the artwork on them with the McClatchy Lion,” Mar said. “Overall, I think it’s been doing really well. They went up around Thanksgiving, and a lot of people came by. It was nice to know it was being used.”