Saturday mornings are likely to look a lot different at the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry starting this weekend, as the pantry is moving its drive-up service to the weekend in the hopes of serving more people in the community.
Beginning Feb. 28, residents looking to pick up food from the pantry can stop by its location at 1110 Jericho Road in Aurora on Saturday mornings from 8 to 10 a.m. — replacing its popular Friday drive-thru service, according to an update from the pantry.
Aurora-area food pantries have in recent months seen rising demand for food amid a monthslong surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs and uncertainty surrounding the future of SNAP benefits.
For Aurora Area Interfaith, that increase has been noticeable for its delivery and drive-up services, the pantry has said previously.
Aurora Area Interfaith began offering a drive-up service last year, and started to promote it to the community as an option as these concerns mounted. Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry in Aurora also offers a drive-thru distribution option.
Part of the reason for Aurora Area Interfaith switching its drive-thru offering from Friday to Saturday, the update from the pantry said, is to reach more families from West Aurora School District 129, which is partnering with the pantry on the new drive-up service.
Citing reluctance from community members to come in and shop inside at the food pantry, the school district and the pantry began working together to come up with a plan that would “show the fact that (they) are community partners,” and help people get food without having to leave their cars, West Aurora School District Associate Superintendent of Operations Angie Smith told The Beacon-News on Wednesday.
They initially considered operating a service our of one of the district’s schools, Smith said, a model that is comparable to one implemented by nearby East Aurora School District 131, which distributes food to high school students in partnership with Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry. But West Aurora was unable to land on a location that had sufficient storage space to make a similar set-up work.
So, the district and food pantry instead landed on working together to promote the new weekly Saturday offering to West Aurora families.
“Making sure that we can kind of really use all of our resources,” Smith said, “through our building newsletters, through our social media, to really let West Aurora families … know, ‘Hey, we’re here to help. We’re partners together.’”
West Aurora already has a few options for students and families to get food. The VNA Health Center at the Jeff Craig Family Resource Center serves West Aurora families and, in partnership with Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry, provides medical care and nutrition support. And Jefferson Middle School already has a “micro pantry” in partnership with Aurora Area Interfaith, which provides food for students to eat and take home.
The latter offering was part of what inspired the pantry’s partnership with the district for the drive-up service, Katie Arko, the pantry’s executive director, said.
Arko said that the success of the initiative at Jefferson led to the pantry getting requests from other schools to offer something similar.
That’s still an option the pantry is considering, Arko said, but, in the meantime, it has decided to work with the district on modifying and promoting its drive-thru service to district families.
As for the rationale for the change, Arko said that demand at the drive-thru distribution on Fridays has been steady since it began, but noted that it may preclude some people who work from using the services.
“We’re just hoping to reach a new … group of people that are struggling, that have not taken advantage of the different resources in the community,” Arko said of the pantry’s moving its drive-thru service to Saturdays.
Drive-thru services are also more convenient, she pointed out, and allow the pantry to serve more residents in a shorter period of time than, say, traditional shopping inside the food pantry.
While the change is geared at reaching more West Aurora families, anyone in the community can use the Saturday drive-up service, not just those in the school district, both Smith and Arko emphasized.
Individuals can register in advance or at the drive-thru, and only have to register the first time they go to the pantry, Arko said, describing the registration requirements as only requiring “very basic information.” The pantry distributes food to people living in Kane, DuPage, Kendall, Will and DeKalb counties.
As far as reaching families in West Aurora District 129, however, Arko described how partnering with the school district might make families feel more comfortable seeking out the services. She also noted, for example, that having to get out of one’s car and come in and out of the pantry could spark concern from individuals in light of fear around the presence of federal immigration agents.
“I think by partnering with the district, it … gives that familiarity that hopefully will prompt families to come and grab food,” Arko said of the new partnership.
Smith pointed out that the district provides students with breakfast and lunch, and sometimes snacks, but that doesn’t happen on the weekends, when students aren’t in school, a gap this new offering aims to fill.
And the drive-up service would be distinct from other food resources the district currently provides in that it allows a family to get significantly more food.
According to Arko, the average packaged box that will go into a car’s trunk as part of the drive-thru will be between 100 and 120 pounds of food — far more than a student could carry home from the micro pantry at Jefferson, for example.
“If you think about it, kind of like when you go to Walmart or Target and can pull up and have your groceries put into your car, that’s more what this is,” Smith said.
Smith said the district has been seeing increased numbers of families coming to the district with concerns about food and housing security as this new partnership comes to fruition.
“As the economy takes a turn and as prices continue to go up, more and more families are struggling paycheck to paycheck, and (we) wanted to make sure that this is yet another resource that they know about, that they have information on and that’s accessible to them,” she said.
She said the district makes providing resources to families “as confidential as possible,” and that it works to encourage community members not to let “pride … get in the way of (them) using these (resources).”
And she thinks the nature of the drive-thru service will help with that.
“I can’t help people who don’t tell me that they need help,” Smith said. “But what we have to do is make people comfortable with being that vulnerable and saying, ‘I need help,’ and I think take some of the stigma away from that.”
And she referred to the need to make families feel like there’s no stigma attached with receiving these services.
“It’s actually a strength to know, ‘Where can I get help?’” Smith said. “It’s actually a strength to know, ‘How do I leverage my dollars in a different way?’ So that I can use the food pantry to help here so that I can focus on my rising utility bill or paying my rent.”
The district is also looking to promote the program within the district in hopes of recruiting more volunteer or financial support for the pantry, Smith noted.
“If we’ve got families in the district that are very fortunate to not have food insecurity, but want to help volunteer, want to help donate cash or things like that, the more that we can get in front of people the fact that there are great nonprofits out there doing great work, and … here’s (one) that you can support that are benefiting your neighbors and your friends here in West Aurora,” Smith said.
And she spoke appreciatively of the community offerings in the district and greater Aurora area.
“Aurora’s a really big little town in some respects, and people want to help, they want to help their neighbor,” Smith said. “I think this is a great example of that.”
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
