Henry County Food Pantry began as a group of people enjoying a very large Thanksgiving dinner in November 2005. The decision was made to box meals and deliver the food to homes in Bassett. As the group went door to door, they found the homes they passed every day hid silent struggles. The elderly had been without food one or more days with no visit from friends or family and not able to drive to
a store. Another had just been released from the hospital, still very sick, burning her own furniture to heat the house. The electric heat would trip the breakers in the house. She had been too sick to gather wood on her own. Door after door that opened that night revealed similar struggles. The lives of the party guests have changed forever since that one night. Extensive research was done. In June 2006, Henry County Food Pantry was established as a 501C3 and offered the "Kid's Cafe" program, primarily funded by USDA. The problem was: Kid's Cafe would only provide food to children under the age of 18 and all food had to be consumed on site. The parents bringing the children were not allowed to eat any of the USDA commodities, nor were the children allowed to take any food home. .... More had to be done! Henry County Food Pantry quickly expanded the Kid's Cafe by purchasing food that was not limited by USDA requirements so parents could eat with their children and children could take food home with them. The Kid's Cafe program ended as the children returned to school. Knowing the children still needed food at home, services expanded again to provide a food pantry, allowing families to pick up meats, vegetables, fruits, breads, cakes, pies and shelf stable items once a month to prepare at home, as needed. As unemployment grew to around 25%, families in need also grew. Word of mouth brought families in need, but also brought volunteers willing to help their neighbors. We have served as many as 792 families in a single day! Henry County Food Pantry developed a drive thru service due to the number of clients with mobility issues (walkers, oxygen tanks, wheel chairs and for safety of children). Each car is assigned a number as they enter the parking lot. A volunteer will gather necessary information. The car will advance to the next station where additional volunteers will load the food into the vehicle for the client(s). There are no paid staff members or board members operating Henry County Food Pantry allowing 100% of donations to go directly to the purchase of food. Henry County Food Pantry receives approximately 10-15% of the food distributed from food donations from local grocery stores and USDA then purchases the remaining 85-90% from Feeding America. USDA and Feeding America requires extensive paperwork / record keeping from agencies. EMI, a major donor to Henry County Food Pantry, recognized the unnecessary time spent filling out paperwork. EMI's coders began writing programs to eliminate all paperwork allowing the clients to sign directly on an iPad or tablet allowing volunteers to do what they enjoy...helping people rather than filing papers. EMI's IT department quickly realized the information gathered in line at the food pantry could do so much more good than just getting the clients a box of food! With the clients permission, we ask a number of questions that may have lead the client to depend on a food pantry. Perhaps they have diabetes which causes high medical bills, loss of time from work then they need to seek help from a food pantry when they really need a dietitian to help them choose proper food to keep the diabetes under control, reducing expensive trips to the doctor and loss of work. EMI's IT department works extensively with HIPAA regulations and security laws and understand the need to keep client information private. Client information is NOT released to participating organizations. Information is released by "blind" notification. Example: a dietitian will receive notification of 87 clients with diabetes in Bassett and 6 in Collinsville. The dietitian knows where they need to have a class and will send notification to the 87 clients in Bassett (without any way of knowing who those clients are). The client can then, if they choose, open contact with the dietitian and register for the class, etc. The same process works for those seeking child care, adult care, jobs (within particular fields of interest), etc. Henry County Food Pantry is going beyond the reaction of handing out food to those in need, it has become proactive to help families confidentially escape with pride from the revolving cycle that has trapped so many desperate families in need before. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
