Milton Community Food Pantry gets $40,000 grant
Milton Community Food Pantry recently received a $40,000 grant from ChristianaCare that will allow the pantry to do four food distributions a month and set up referral software to help those in need find the pantry.
Ken Sosne, the pantry’s volunteer coordinator, said the grant is important for the organization, especially for the referral system supplied by the national company Unite Us, which can help find people who live in remote areas. In addition, Sosne said, the system will enable the pantry to be connected with other nonprofits to share services. He said similar grants were given to other organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs and Sussex County Habitat for Humanity.
Two of the on-the-ground personnel from Unite Us, Demetrius Frazier and Lindsay Hebert, were at the pantry’s May 16 food distribution to see the pantry in action and hand out meals.
Hebert said, “It’s a nice analytic tool that will give beautiful visuals of how many food boxes they’ve given away and how many people they have served.”
She said the way the referral system works is if people in the area need food and they are referred to the pantry, the pantry will easily be able to get information to those people on the dates of food distribution.
“It takes off some of the edge. We see people in the community that are embarrassed that they have a need. Because of that, they think it's too complicated. But it's really easy to get your need met, and that information is kept totally confidential in our system,” Hebert said.
Food pantry President Donna Murawski said, “I think this will be better organized. We just like the idea that if there is someone we haven’t reached, we will be able to reach them.”
The new system comes at a time of transition for the food pantry, which recently uprooted its operations from Goshen Hall in downtown Milton to Water’s Edge church on Route 16. However, in June, the church will be demolishing a portion of its property, which includes the storage area the pantry is using.
In addition, in July, the pantry is scheduled to be heard by Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission on a new facility, which requires extensive renovation to be fitted for the pantry’s use. Pantry leadership has not disclosed where the new facility is to keep clients from mistakenly going there for food distributions, which will continue to take place at Water’s Edge on Mondays.
