As a young adult, Amber Daugs of Manitowoc found herself without a place to live and in need of food. She had never been to a food pantry before, and she approached her first appointment with trepidation.
Her fears were not unfounded.
“There was a lack of healthy, nutritious food. The very last table that I went to had a swollen bag of lettuce, an orange that had mold on it and an apple that was heavily bruised,” Daugs told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
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Daugs said she didn’t know the pantry etiquette and was scolded for not bringing her own bags.
“At this food pantry, my experience was less than dignified,” she said.
Fast forward 27 years, and Daugs is the founder and CEO of Grow It Forward, a nonprofit organization focused on providing healthy food to the Manitowoc community through pantry access, gardens and free weekly meals. In addition to a full pantry distribution, the organization has been stocking a “Little Free Pantry” since 2020.
Modeled after Little Free Libraries, the Little Free Pantry movement started in 2016. The pantries are self-service kiosks where community members can take (and contribute) food or hygiene items. Unlike traditional food banks, Little Free Pantries are accessible 24 hours a day. Since the pantries are not staffed, people who are nervous about asking for help can avoid awkward interactions like Daugs had.
“I wish the pantry library existed when I went through my own circumstance so many years ago, because there’s a lot of anxiety in going to a pantry,” Daugs said.
“Wisconsin Today” talked to four Little Free Pantry keepers around the state to learn about how they work and their impact in local communities.
‘Growing it forward’ in Manitowoc
The Little Free Pantry at Daugs’s organization started as part of Carson Goetz’s Eagle Scout project. Goetz installed four pantries — or “Blessing Boxes” — in Manitowoc at the Grow It Forward office, an elementary school, a local church and the Salvation Army.
Grow It Forward hosts a distribution of food boxes with fresh produce and dairy on Thursdays and Fridays from 2 to 5 p.m. To receive a box, visitors only need to give their income and household size — no paperwork or identification is required. (Daugs said this might change depending on federal guidelines).
The Little Free Pantry, however, is totally self-serve and available any day of the week, at any time of the day or night, which Daugs said is critical for helping people and children in the community. She noted that more than three-quarters of the students at nearby Jefferson Elementary School are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
“We have children in our neighborhood that might not have enough to eat at home,” Daugs said. The Little Free Pantry is “a safe spot for them to go because children aren’t necessarily calling for a food pantry appointment.”
Daugs said the most popular pantry items are convenience foods like granola bars, cereal boxes and ramen noodles. A woman in the neighborhood who likes to crochet sometimes leaves handmade winter hats in the pantry.
“Those go really quickly,” Daugs said.
Pantry in Marshall has shared over 40K pounds of goods, founder says
When Eric Salzwedel and his wife purchased a house in Marshall in late 2019, he was excited to have a place to install a Little Free Pantry, which he had heard about on social media.
A few months later, when the COVID-19 pandemic came to the U.S., Salzwedel called up a friend of his to build the pantry on his property. With the green light from village officials, he spread the word that community members could use the pantry or drop off items to be donated on his porch any time.
“We have a system in place where folks donate food into a donation bin, then we take it out, we weigh it … we document it, we stock it into other bins and inside of our home,” Salzwedel said. “About every day, I go out in the morning and evening and fill up the pantry with probably about 20 pounds of food items and personal hygiene items.”
As he sorts through the items with volunteers, Salzwedel said he makes sure there’s nothing opened, expired or otherwise unfit for the pantry. His policy is that if he wouldn’t feed it to his own kids, he won’t put it out. But he is able to share the vast majority of the food that comes in.
Salzwedel said the most sought-after items are supplies like shampoo and tampons that can’t be purchased with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Sometimes he will distribute larger bulk items like diapers and baby formula via the Facebook group he created for the pantry.
Over the past five years, the pantry has been able to distribute over 40,000 pounds of food and hygiene products, he said, adding that that’s a lot for “little old Marshall,” a village of less than 4,000 residents.
“A little food pantry where someone can come 24 hours a day, seven days a week, any time, and not have to interact with people or give personal information” can be a lifeline for people who might struggle to ask for help, Salzwedel said.
“There’s a power to that,” he added. “That’s why these Little Free Pantries are so impactful to so many.”
Students leave a ‘helping club’ legacy at their school in La Crosse
In 2021, a group of friends at Hintgen Elementary School in La Crosse founded the Hintgen Helping Club after noticing that some of their classmates were coming to school without socks in the winter. The girls hosted a hot chocolate stand that raised almost $200 to purchase socks.
Throughout the year, the girls behind the helping club continued to hold fundraisers to raise money for clothes and food.
Ryan Schmidt is a school counselor and social worker at Hintgen. As part of his job, he helps run the school’s clothes closet and drive-in food pantry.
But he saw a need for a more accessible and discreet way for people to access food. So, he approached the helping club parents with an idea: Let’s put a Little Free Pantry in front of the school building.
Together with their parents, the helping club girls raised funds, bought materials and built and decorated the pantry.
Schmidt said it has been a “community collaboration” to keep the pantry stocked over the years. In addition to donations from students and their parents, the Great Shepherd Lutheran Church down the street supplies food on a weekly basis.
The helping club girls are now in middle school, but Schmidt says they still drop by Hintgen to pick up younger siblings or visit during school events. While the official club is now disbanded, its legacy lives on through the pantry.
“I’ve heard kids say that they just love being able to come with their mom or dad because they need the extra food,” Schmidt said. “It’s great that we can impact kids who may not necessarily be known to need weekly food bags, but maybe a meal here or a meal there.”
Church in Oshkosh: ‘Take what you need, give what you can”
The Peace Lutheran Church in Oshkosh started up one of the first Little Free Pantries in the state in 2016 after Pastor Dara Clifford was inspired by a story of a church in Arkansas creating a pantry.
“It was a tangible, direct way to serve the neighborhood and community surrounding the church,” Clifford said.
The Peace church building is located in an area of Oshkosh that’s considered a food desert. Before the pantry, the only place to buy food in the neighborhood was at nearby gas stations. Now, the church sees community members come through every day to make use of the Little Free Pantry, including people from the nearby warming shelter and bus lines.
At first, the church tried to find different organizations in Oshkosh to help fill up the pantry. Now, church leaders rely strongly on an endowment fund they created to purchase the most-used items. They also host monthly themed drives to collect specific items like pasta or shampoo and encourage churchgoers to contribute.
For Clifford, who also runs a Facebook group for Little Free Pantry stewards around the country, the pantry offers her parishioners an opportunity to reflect on what and why they give.
“Sometimes, when we’re in positions of privilege, we take it upon ourselves to make judgments about who’s in need and who’s not,” she said. “The Little Free Pantry forces a letting go of that and recognizing that people are capable of assessing for themselves what they need.”
Clifford said that under the current presidential administration, food assistance programs are at risk of losing funding, making resources like Little Free Pantries all the more vital to the community.
“To have a judgment-free place where people can come to receive the things that they need, that is an act of resistance,” she said. “It is a holy act of resistance to support and love our neighbors and to say, ‘We are going to give to you so that you can eat.’”
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