A New Morning
Selfless Among Us - Annie Carlson from St. Patrick's Food Pantry
Amazon Black Friday Week is here, with up to 40% off toys to stuff their stocking, noise-canceling tech tech silent their night, and fashion like slippers too, missile their tips. Shop Amazon's Black Friday deals now. Now, selfless among us, a special WBEN series of interviews and stories presented in conjunction with the West Her Automotive Group. Here's WBEN's Susan Rose. Annie Carlson is joining me. She's volunteer coordinator for St. Patrick's Food Pantry in Buffalo. Annie, I've lived here a long time. This is the first I'm hearing about St. Patrick's and I know I'm not alone. How long has it been around and who do you serve? St. Patrick's pantry has actually been around since the turn of the century. It was down by, they read in Patrick's parish. I believe it took care of men coming off from boats also. It served the community for a very long time. It used to be located in St. Patrick's Priory and serve as that community, the community of some of 14206, some of 14210. It's open now one day a week on Wednesdays on William Street across from the post office in Goodwill Plaza. What is the need like? The need has grown, I would say, exponentially in all of our community. Food insecurity has greatly increased. We stayed open all through the COVID epidemic. We didn't miss a beat. We weren't closed at all. Post epidemic, we have seen our numbers increase greatly from all areas. We see a lot of clients who don't actually live in the St. Patrick community that we serve. Which my motto is, if somebody comes to my door and needs of food, I don't turn anybody away. I will service and provide what we have to anybody who comes at least once. If they're part of our pantry family, I will get them part of our pantry. If they're not part of our area, I will direct them to Feedmore or to the Feedmore's website to find where their pantry in their neighborhood is. How do you get what you need? We are a Feedmore food pantry. So we do get to order from Feedmore of Western New York and get the supply, get what we can from them, which is a very high majority of our food. I do a lot of community pickup. I have some community relationships with stores, friends, other churches, organizations that I've been involved with friends who donate. And you're also under the arm of Peace Prince. I see too. They are our administrative and our backbone of who, if we are in need and don't have it or cannot get it, yes, they will support us as much as they can. Yes. How long have you been volunteer coordinator? I think it's going on six years, maybe seven years prior to that. I actually wasn't even a volunteer at St. Patrick's pantry. I got involved with St. Patrick's pantry through my children, through the religious education program. I used to pick up from my church I belong to and bring it to St. Patrick's pantry. And now, as I've been doing it and we're doing it one day a week right now because of I am still, I have a job, I'm a nurse, so it works with my schedule. What do you require of your clients? How do you know how much to give them? When clients come to the pantry, I ask for what we require is ID improve of address based on where we, where we service. So that's how I know if they're part of our pantry area. It's all a, on your honor, if somebody says I'm hungry or I need food for my family, that's all I require. And then based on the number of people in the family, it's based on what we provide. If somebody is in extra need, they get extra. If somebody is homeless, I make sure that I give them or provide them something that they don't necessarily need to be cooking or need a lot of refrigeration. And I am very non-judgmental. We never know who it's going to be. It could be me one day, I'm blessed that I haven't been in the position to need food. But that doesn't mean tomorrow, something might change. You know, sometimes it's somebody's going through a hard stage that something all of a sudden happened. It's planted just closed in Tanoanda. That's going to have a whole lot of families have that food insecurity. We serve as many as we can. We're not real big. We don't have a lot of space, but we provide what we can with always a smile. You know, there's always a focus at the holidays on food insecurity, but we know it's a year around issue. How difficult is it for some to come and ask for help? That's probably the biggest hurdle to be able to say I need assistance feeding my family. My feeling is, and I've said it to me because people will apologize, and I said there's no, there's no apology, I applaud you in your strength for being able to say I need some help with this. 365 days a year, people are hung. People need to eat. The holiday, yes, the holiday season is a time forgiving, and it does make everybody think about it more, but in July, the same children, the same families are hungry. I think it takes great strength to say you need assistance. Annie, if people are listening and they want to help, what can they do? How can they help you? They can help by donating food. They can donate to food, to the pantry directly. They can donate food to feed more, who provides all the pantries of the whole area. They can volunteer. We don't have, I don't have a lot of space. We always like, I would like to have as many volunteers as possible. We don't have the space to have so many volunteers inside because of the size of our pantry location. Monetary donation, helping your neighbor. If you have something that's extra, I always tell, you know, everything in this, you might not need everything that we provide. Share it with your neighbors. Annie, how does it feel to be recognized as selfless among us? It's overwhelming. I do this because I love to do it. I love to help people. It's a wonderful recognition. The volunteers I have are beyond, go beyond to help me and support and work very hard. It's overwhelming, but it's a wonderful spotlight on, yes, this community, there is need. And there is a, we see a small portion. I said, if we see, we saw 70 families came in a day. That's a fraction of who could have come, who may need it to come, who just couldn't. But it's a wonderful spotlight. The pantry does wonderful work. It services our community. And that's why we're here. Annie, Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to you. And thank you. It's overwhelming. I'm Annie Carlson from St. Patrick's Food Pantry, selfless among us, presented by West Her Auto Group. (upbeat music)
St. Patrick's Pantry has been around since the turn of the 20th century helping those in need of food. Susan Rose talks to Annie Carlson about the Pantry's work in the community.