Volunteers at the Food Pantry Ministry at White Drive Baptist Church (Image by Andrea Bruner, White River Now)
Arkansas Foodbank to bring IndCo pantries together for meeting
By Andrea Bruner, White River Now
For a man living out of his car, relief at the White Drive Baptist Church food pantry didn’t just come in a box of groceries — it arrived in a simple bowl.
When a volunteer noticed a guest scanning ingredients to avoid a food allergy, it captured the true spirit of a ministry that has become a vital lifeline since it opened last December.
In the food pantry’s lines, compassion is as much a staple as the food on the shelves.
“We’re not judgmental of anybody – we serve everybody,” said volunteer David Scarbrough. “Everybody’s got a hurt and a need, and we try to find out what those needs are and to be a bright and shining light.”
Sometimes that light looks like a dedicated volunteer handing over a piece of dishware so a neighbor has a way to eat meals instead of eating straight from a box. Other times, it looks like stopping mid-day at a designated table to hold hands and pray with someone overwhelmed to tears by their circumstances. For Scarbrough and the rest of the volunteer crew, every label read, bowl given, and prayer offered boils down to a single mission: meeting people exactly where they are and showing them they haven’t been forgotten.
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Scarbrough said the bowl story began when one of the volunteers noticed a man coming who’d been coming to the pantry since it had opened and was reading the food labels. She struck up a conversation and soon found out not only that he was living in his vehicle, but he also didn’t have so much as a bowl.
“So, the next time he came, she had gotten a bowl for him and gave it to him. I mean, he was just so excited to get a bowl instead of having to eat out of a can,” Scarbrough said.
“Sometimes you’ll talk to people, and they’ll just break down and start crying because of their situation. We’ve got that prayer table, and I tell them, ‘Well, that gentleman over there would be more than happy to pray for you, and we can pray for you.’ We’ve had times where people have just stopped and prayed with people in the lines.
“It’s just to show the love of Christ to everybody that we come in contact with.”
Scarbrough said the food pantry was started by a couple of women at the church last December. “The goal was to start feeding people in church that needed food, and they decided to open it up to be bigger.”
The food pantry applied and became a part of the Arkansas Foodbank, which also provides food to Batesville Help & Hope, Independence County Senior Citizens Program, White River Area Agency on Aging, Southside Assembly of God, Cushman United Methodist Church and Southside 4-H Food Pantry.
“It’s just grown exponentially since then,” Scarbrough said, noting that the pantry started in a small closet and has moved into a gymnasium-sized room.
Scarbrough came on board in April as a volunteer to help with ordering but eventually came to oversee the program.
“Nobody gets paid – everybody’s a volunteer,” Scarbrough said. “We have an enormous number of volunteers. Some days we’ll be sitting there thinking we don’t have enough volunteers, and a few minutes before we open, all these volunteers walk in – we’re just blessed beyond imagination.”
“We know there’s a big need, and Independence County has one of the highest needs as far as food insecurity,” he continued, citing a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that ranks Arkansas as the most food-insecure state in the U.S. by percentage of population. And, according to the latest county-level data compiled by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap research, Independence County ranks in the top third of food insecurity rates, at 21.2 percent.
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Scarbrough said people will start lining up at White Drive as early as 7 a.m., even when the temperature is going to be 100 degrees that day, bringing lawn chairs and patiently waiting outside to get in. By the time the doors open at 10, he said, there are sometimes as many as 60 or 70 people outside.
The pantry has served people from as far away as Horseshoe Bend, Bald Knob, and Newport.
It also recently started evening hours once a month, the first Thursday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. “The first Thursday we opened, we had 50 people,” Scarbrough said.
“We do have a few regulars, but there’s a lot of them that I think just come when they really need it,” he said.
Language barriers present another challenge, but Scarbrough noted that they have translators who are volunteering their time to assist clients with conversations and paperwork.
Scarbrough said White Drive is called a “choice pantry” in that clients can choose which items they want.
“It gives them dignity, and to be able to come in and pick what they want, and it also helps with the cost in the fact that they will pick what they eat instead of us just trying to give them a box of food that they might not eat a portion of it and just throw it away.”
There are no income guidelines, but clients must present identification, such as a driver’s license or state-issued ID. Clients can come twice a month to get food.
Scarbrough said that in one single day they served 122 households, and last month they served 378 households, which ended up totaling 1,285 individuals.
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But while they feed stomachs, Scarbrough also hopes to touch people’s hearts. “We’ve got a prayer station at the pantry. I mean, a lot of people are struggling, they’re seeking something, and we’re trying to point them in the direction of salvation and God being in their lives.”
Scarbrough also said they are building relationships with medical agencies and other area partners to provide information year-round about housing, employment, and other needs.
“Maybe they need help with their electric bills. We’ve got information linked to where we direct them to check with NADC (Northcentral Arkansas Development Council) at certain times of the year. We’ve also got connections at SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), because those are very complex forms to fill out; we’ve got people that we can direct them to that can help simplify that and help them understand what they’re filling out so that they don’t fill it out incorrectly.”
Scarbrough said they have also presented information from Family Violence Prevention, the Alpha Center, 100 Families and others on food pantry days.
“We direct people to those resources instead of them trying to find it on their own – it’s all in one location. Everybody’s got different needs. … When they first come in, we don’t want to bombard them with information, but we start building these relationships with them,” he added.
In partnership with the Arkansas Foodbank, White Drive has also been designated as a community resource center.
“If there is a natural disaster like a tornado that happened in Cave City last year, the foodbank would send food and resources to our location, whether it be the food drops, Red Cross or Samaritan’s Purse – we would be the hub for that,” said.
Scarbrough said he believes the food pantries in the community work together in their common goal of feeding the hungry.
He said the Arkansas Foodbank has scheduled a meeting with all of the food pantries in Independence County on Oct. 1 “to bring everybody together and to get everybody to see that we’re not competing against each other. We’re all trying to feed hungry people,” he said. “So we don’t want it to be a competition. We want to be able to work together.
“I’ll reach out to all the pantries that I know of when I’ve got excess stuff coming in,” he said. “About a month ago, I had six pallets of mangoes come in. I reached out to all of them, and they all came and got mangoes.”
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What continually surprises Scarbrough is “how God has provided in numerous ways.”
“We’re donation supported, so we rely upon money coming in through donations, and I’ve been in awe at the number of prayers that have been answered from God,” Scarbrough said.
“We’ll get a bill for $1,800 or whatever it might be, from the food bank, and there’s $1,400 in the bank, so how are we gonna pay that? And then we’ll get a donation for $600 or something like that,” Scarbrough said.
“Plus the volunteers – you think, oh, where are these volunteers gonna come from? In the summer, we did a produce drop where the food bank sent us all these pallets of produce. It was in the heat of the day when we were getting it, and we only had like five volunteers. You know, we’re old; we can’t be out in this heat. But when that produce showed up, we had these armies of people show up. One time we had 13 teenagers show up.”
Another time, one of their freezers died, and they had a bunch of bread that was going to ruin if someone didn’t take it, he said. “I called Southside Assembly and some others, and they gave them the bread that I had that they had, so it wouldn’t ruin.”
Scarbrough estimated there are between 10 and 15 food pantries in Independence County, although not all are associated with the Arkansas Foodbank.
He said several banks have organized food drives and donated the collected food, “which was amazing.” He hopes other organizations will also hold food drives to help replenish the pantry’s supplies.
“I’ve seen people now that were struggling pretty bad and were living in their vehicle, and now they’ve got to a place where they’ve got a job and a place to live and stuff,” he said. “Just knowing that our organization had a little bit of a hand in supplying love and food to them, and watching God be involved in their lives, it’s just amazing to sit back and watch.”
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White Drive Baptist Church is located at 445 White Drive, Batesville. To make a food or monetary donation, email foodpantry@whitedrivebaptist.org. You can also follow the “Food Pantry Ministry” page on Facebook.
Food Pantry Ministry Guidelines, according to the organization’s Facebook page:
- Our desire is to help those in our community who need assistance. To serve as many people as possible, we have established several guidelines:
- Open once a week on Tuesdays at 10 a.m.
- Each household is allowed to come once every two weeks.
- A photo ID is required during registration and sign-in.
- A member of your household must be present to receive food. We do not allow picking up food for other people.
- To give dignity to those who need assistance, our food pantry is designed for people to choose their own food and personal care items. In order to sustain the pantry, each food and personal care item will have a limit in place.
- If you have a cough, fever, or other cold/flu symptoms, please wear a mask. We will carry out pre-selected food to those who are physically unable to leave their vehicle.
Two Important Updates:
1.) Beginning in October, in addition to our weekly Tuesday morning pantry, we will also be open the first Thursday night of every month from 5:30 pm- 7:00 pm.
2.) Beginning in October, each household will be allowed to visit the pantry TWICE a month anytime the doors are open. Instead of the previous guideline of “once every two weeks,” you can choose the two times during the month you would like to come.
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