While restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, or SNAP, begin and winter weather continues, one food pantry in north Normal is bolstering its efforts to combat food insecurity.
Unity Cupboard is a food pantry and service of the University of Illinois Extension in Bloomington-Normal. It’s open every Thursday morning from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Unity Community Center on Orlando Avenue.
Ray Crawford of Bloomington is a shopper at the pantry, but he actually doesn’t come for himself.
“The building that I live in, I have a couple of families that really need some help, so I just try to come over here and get things for them,” he said. “They have a little, small child. They just need some help, so I just come and I grab a lot of things and I give it to them and to a lot of people in the building.”
The pantry serves approximately 45 families each week. On Thursday, they counted 43 for the day.
Crawford has been helping his neighbors since he moved into his apartment about 4 months ago.
“This is a great place right here, and they really serve the community very, very well,” he said.
Crawford has also taken time to volunteer at his church, Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church.
Xavier Moore also went to Unity Thursday morning and spoke highly of the pantry.
“I just thought it would be a good opportunity. I think y’all are doing a good thing here, giving out food and stuff, I feel like that’s a good thing to do,” he said.
Moore and his cousin were on their second visit to the pantry, a place where he described feeling welcomed to shop.
“Hospitality, I like the good vibes,” Moore said.
Addressing food insecurity
Staci Coussens is a SNAP-Ed educator at Illinois Extension. Her duties surrounding policy systems and food education will be transferring to a new position, as SNAP-Ed was cut last year, but she will still help manage the Unity Community Center.
She said the placement of the pantry is purposeful, as its location on Orlando Avenue serves many families who are not able to reach grocery stores without riding the bus or crossing busy streets.
“We have this space with our community center here that we just wanted to provide for the community, so we started with just a table and opening it up to the community for a few hours every week,” Coussens said. “That is one thing that is unique with us; we do not limit how many times per month a person can come. They can come every single week.”
Unity offers a limited amount of dry goods, but they also offer refrigerated and frozen products.
In the past weeks, the pantry has heavily depended on community partners to help bring additional food. One of which is Midwest Food Bank, their source of food.
“Midwest Food Bank, as we started seeing more people and started struggling with keeping up with demand, they were able to make us a larger agency so we can get more food from them, which has been such a blessing,” she said.
With the increase in demand, they also partnered with an agency that could help them transport the extra food for each week.
“About in the last four or five months, we’ve started partnering with U-Haul, because we have SUVs as our personal vehicles, and they don’t hold very much,” said Coussens. “So, for our one big distribution every month we have been parting with U-Haul.”
On Feb. 1, work requirements and other changes went into effect for SNAP. One significant change requires adults aged 18 to 64 without dependents under 14 to work or volunteer at least 80 hours per month in order to receive benefits.
It could affect up to 340,000 Illinoisans, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.
"We have been preparing for it by just being cognizant. We have started to put out more asks to some of our community partners to do more food drives for us,” she said. “We do expect demand to increase because of these work requirements.”
Additional services
Like other food pantries, Unity Cupboard has more than just food. On Thursday morning, one table included almost exclusively health and hygiene products like toothbrushes and allergy pills. There were even small puzzles.
“These items are almost more important than the food, because these items are not able to be purchased with SNAP benefits and typically are kind of expensive products,” Coussens said. “We’ve got allergy medicine, and even the generic allergy medicine at the store is almost $20.”
Lauren Harper is the program coordinator at the community center. She runs the after-school program for Unit 5 students at the center but also helps out with the pantry when necessary.
“I think getting to know our specific community has been really eye-opening, making those connections with people who come to our cupboard. And also we have parents and guardians of our kiddos who will come in and shop at our cupboard,” Harper said.
“I always knew through my collegiate experience that I wanted to do something like this in a setting that is flexible and rewarding in that way.”
Unity Cupboard accepts donations, including food, clothes or other items.
