A food pantry that serves hundreds of Bloomington-Normal residents each month is ending.
One Saturday morning a month, volunteers arrange a truckload of food on tables in the cafeteria of Normal Community West High School. Typically, about 200 people and families get fresh bread, canned goods, fresh fruit, vegetables, cereal and so on. Sometimes there are meat and dairy products too.
The Unit 5 school district coordinates the distribution. The Eastern Illinois Foodbank provides the food. Bloomington-Normal community volunteers offer labor and help people with disabilities or who have children in tow to get the food out to their vehicles. It's one of the larger food pantries in the Twin Cities.
The Eastern Illinois Foodbank, headquartered in Urbana, is shutting down the project.
"Part of the evaluation of ending the distribution at Normal Community West is that we are seeing this historic need, and we know that we need to allocate our resources as best that we can," said Foodbank Development Director Amanda Borden.
Borden said demand for food has doubled in the last two years as pandemic support has ebbed. She said elevated need will likely continue. The Midwest Food Bank in Normal has reported a similar spike in demand over the two-year period.
Borden frames Eastern Illinois Foodbank's choice as one of "equitable" use of resources.
“Folks in Bloomington-Normal have access to food pantries, for example the Unit 5 Food Pantry that we now have. They have a lot more resources available to them," said Borden.
Borden said the resources that had gone to Normal West will now go to rural food pantries.
"We're just focusing those mobile distributions on areas that don't have access to food pantries or transportation. A lot of folks out in those communities just don't have a way to access emergency food assistance as easily," said Borden.
For instance, in McLean County there are two routes, one in the northern part of the county and one in the southern part of the county.
"Each month they'll do a distribution where they are hitting several towns in a day to ensure that we are equitably distributing food to folks that may not have access to it," said Borden.
The southern route covers Bellflower, Stanford, and McLean on the fourth Wednesday of each month. The northern one stops in Gridley, Chenoa, Colfax, and Saybrook on the fourth Monday of each month.
The Normal West distribution is not just one of the larger food assistance efforts in the community. It's also different from most in that people can pick the food they need. Arranging the food by category on tables makes it closer to a shopping experience. Users have told organizers that makes the process more welcoming and gives them dignity. The Eastern Illinois Food Bank is ending that after the June distribution.
