“MY HAPPY PLACE”

Volunteering at the Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges

By Harriet Sigerman

Volunteers are the backbone of the IFPO, They register clients for the food pantry, unpack boxes of food and carry food bags to cars, and more.

On most Wednesdays, (IFPO) is a busy, buzzing place full of smiles and friendly chatter. It

is a volunteer-run food pantry designed to meet the needs of food-insecure residents who live primarily in Orange, East Orange and West Orange.

Guided by the motto of service with dignity and respect, the IFPO is a special place for clients,

who receive much-needed food items and other services; for their children, who can choose free books from the book table; and for volunteers, who feel profound satisfaction in helping their neighbors.

The pantry provides clients with fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat or fish, cereal, pasta, and canned food items.

Rob Depue, who started volunteering after he retired, views the IFPO as “my happy place. It’s

really helping a lot of people that need the help. All the clients here are very thankful and conver-

sational. Everybody is just working through whatever situation they are in. It’s a safe place to be. I go home every week [from] my happy place.”

Volunteer Diana Galer welcomes newcomers to the food pantry and adds them to the IFPO waiting list.

Located at 357 S. Jefferson Street in Orange, the pantry provides clients with fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, eggs, meat or fish, cereal, pasta and canned food items. On a monthly basis clients also receive toiletries, menstrual care products and home-cleaning supplies. A special “diaper program” provides 100 diapers and three packs of wipes (or two packs and ointment) to clients who live in Orange, East Orange or West Orange and who have children under the age of 3.

Volunteers are the backbone of this operation. They register clients for the food pantry, unpack boxes of food, carry food bags to cars, deliver food to clients who are homebound, help clients pick

out items at food stations, monitor the flow of food at these stations to make sure they’re always well stocked, and give clients a word of encouragement or a friendly hug.

Every sign, form and announcement is shown in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole.

The IFPO began nearly 30 years ago by individual members of four congregations in Essex County: Congregation Beth El and Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange and Temple B’nai Jeshurun and Christ Church in Short Hills. From an initial clientele of 20 to 30 recipients, the IFPO now annually assists 1,500 households. Clients come about two or more times a month, amounting to an average of 2,268 pantry visits each month. And the numbers keep rising.

.The IFPO is a full-service support system for clients. In addition to distributing food and personal care products, the IFPO brings trained experts from the Community Connections Team of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey twice a month to help clients apply for Supplemental

Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). IFPO volunteers provide information about clinics that administer required back-to-school vaccinations and also offer access to school district websites where clients can obtain applications forprograms that serve school and summer meals to their children. 

Clients select their groceries at food stations.

RWJ Barnabas, Summit Health Cares and the Essex County Office of Public Health work with the IFPO to conduct health screenings, provide nutritional counseling and refer clients out for diabetes treatment and other health conditions. In the fall, RWJ Barnabas and the Essex County Health Department Mobile Van provide flu shots.

Representatives from other organizations help clients enroll in state-funded health insurance, assist with tax preparation and provide other services. Most agency workers communicate in three languages: English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Every sign, form and announcement at the IFPO is in these three languages as part of the IFPO’s mission to treat clients with dignity and respect by ensuring that clients receive information in a language they understand.

To provide enrichment for clients’ children, Anne Quinn, who founded the Essex Book Pantry in 2018, comes every week throughout summer with boxes of books to help children select books at their read ing level and interests. Kids even get small prizes for writing book reports. The pantry is trying to create lifelong readers and learners. Anne describes with delight how the book pantry “brings joy. The faces light up know ing they can bring the books home.”

Clients pick up their food bags by driving up to retrieve their groceries or walking up to the food stations to select food items. Clients who drive through receive a pre-selected assortment of food items.

Karyn Boosin Leit, the executive director of the IFPO, says the food pantry is a “supplemental food pantry.” It cannot provide all the food that clients need. She explains, “We expect that our clients are going to have to find some food in other ways. What we provide is a generous amount of food, but it’s not going to last [until clients] come back.”

Executive director Karyn Boosin Leit was a volunteer before she became the only paid employee at the pantry.

About 75 volunteers work each week during the pantry’s two shifts on Mondays and Wednesdays, and 450 volunteers work throughout the year. There’s also a teen board whose members fundraise and do advocacy work. Last year, the teen board hosted an elimination basketball tournament, which raised enough money to purchase a pallet of produce.

The IFPO volunteers help clients in less tangible ways as well. Says Leit, “Clients

will confide in us if they’re having some difficulty. We have places that we can refer them. We provide clients with access that they might otherwise not have,” including knowledge of “their constitutional rights.”

Leit says the volunteers relish helping clients. “You can see the comfort that you bring and the love

that you bring with the food you’re giving. Our volunteers leave tired. In the summer it’s very hot. In the winter it’s very cold. There’s a lot of heavy lifting. You leave spent but feeling that your time was very worthwhile.”

Leit herself was a volunteer before she became the only paid employee at the pantry. She grew up being taught the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, which is repairing the world through

social action, and has long been involved in social activism.

Many volunteers echoed Leit’s passion and dedication to the pantry. Connor Der, a high school

student from West Orange, volunteered at the IFPO every Monday and Wednesday this past summer.

“I’ve always been interested in it and giving back to the community,” he says. “It’s really good people that we’re helping out. I see myself as really privileged, so giving back is a big

thing for me.”

Kristin Sterling, vice president of volunteer relations, has been a volunteer for 12 years. “Food insecurity is such a huge problem in the community, so being able to help people is the number one thing for coming here.” She notes that clients have formed a special community among themselves and will give items from their food bags to other clients whom they think need them

more.

“The volunteer community is also really tight,” she adds, “and [it’s] wonderful how they all have specific concerns about the clients and helping the clients. It’s just an amazing group of people.”

Carrie Somberg, who has been volunteering since the pandemic, is proud of what the IFPO accomplishes. “You unfortunately see the same people over and over again. The need

does not go away. To see the families and all the other resources that we combine with giving food: how to get SNAP benefits, giving out books to the young children, Summit Medical Group being here giving vaccines during Covid, doing diabetes education and all the other things.”

Young men from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints volunteer weekly.

This fall the IFPO will sponsor two drives. In October, there is a drive for new or clean, gently used coats and in November, there will be a drive for frozen turkeys and prepacked bags of canned foods for clients’ holiday dinners. Information about these two drives will appear on the IFPO’s website and in its monthly online newsletter. To subscribe or donate money, visit orangesfoodpantry.org.

The IFPO faces new challenges to help its expanding client base. As inflation rises, “we’re finding more and more people in need,” says Leit. The Community FoodBank of New Jersey, from which the IFPO receives most of its food, has already cut back from providing 87 percent of the pantry’s fresh fruits and vegetables to 68 percent. The IFPO will have to make up the difference. “Everyone [still] gets fresh produce,” insists Leit. “We are supplementing more and purchasing more of what is most important to our clients, which is fresh, nutritious food.”

The federal government will reduce funding to SNAP in 2025 by roughly $186 billion – about 20 percent. New rules will make it harder for families to receive SNAP. But Leit says, “We will continue to do whatever we can to make sure we’re providing for our clients, and we welcome and need the support of the community to help us do that.”

Despite whatever challenges lie ahead in helping clients, come Wednesday mornings, one thing is sure: The volunteers of the Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges will happily gear up for another gratifying day of distributing food, fellowship and smiles.

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Harriet Sigerman is a freelance writer and copy editor who lives in Maplewood.