Volunteers did not even put out on Broadway our sandwich sign stating “Free Food” in both English and Spanish last Saturday. Nonetheless, we still broke another distribution record. We gave food to 218 heads of household for around 800 people. I have no explanation for the increase in clients, but food prices are rising, so that might be a factor. And, of course, I have no idea how many clients we will serve next Saturday. More? Less? Stay tuned!

by Maureen McNair
Happy New Year, everyone!
We had access to absolutely no turkeys from either of the two main regional food banks before Christmas. It was our pleasure to give away a lot of other food and the dozens of gift cards many of you all so generously donated. Our last food distribution before Christmas turned out to be our biggest food distribution to date, serving 206 households with over 840 individuals!

By Maureen McNair
My main goal for our church’s South Bay Food Pantry is for it to go out of business because no one needs our services any longer. Along those lines, I have bad news and good news to share. The bad news is last Saturday, we had our biggest food distribution to date. We provided food to 206 households — mostly families and seniors. The good news is we were there to alleviate their food insecurity. The members and friends of this congregation are so consistently generous, we have never had to turn away anyone without giving them food. We distributed over a ton of fresh produce, plus chicken, eggs, frozen meals, dry goods, and bread. And, through the generosity of a one-time donation from a community groups, we were also able to give away often-requested adult diapers and at-home covid tests.

by Maureen McNair
Have you ever wondered what kind of work it takes to get food into our church’s South Bay Food Pantry?
Right now, it takes several volunteer teams working on Friday and Saturday to get the food we will distribute Saturday morning.
On Friday morning at 8 AM, Valerie Jaques and I meet in Mira Mesa at the San Diego Food Bank warehouse.  We shop for meat, poultry, frozen meals, eggs, fresh produce, and dry goods. Valerie does a lot of heavy lifting of goods into her pick up truck, then drives down to our pantry in Chula Vista.

By Maureen McNair
A well-oiled machine of food pantry volunteers, including church members and dedicated people from the wider community, distributed free food to over 200 happy families last Saturday in our busiest food give-away to date. The South Bay Food Pantry volunteers gave away fresh produce, frozen chicken, eggs, a bag of dry goods, 8-10 food items from Starbucks, and artisan bread to each household. In addition, we gave frozen turkeys to several community members. We also delivered free turkeys to the homes of several church families. Many, many hours of prep work went into creating this mass food distribution. But, our volunteers managed to put several tons of nutritious food into our South Bay community in 90 minutes. Then, we cleaned up, and went home.

by Maureen McNair
The South Bay Food Pantry is pleased to announce we won a countywide competition to launch a program to distribute free period products. We accepted our first delivery this past Tuesday. We will distribute pads and tampons on Sundays during our free diaper distribution.
The period products program is being administered by the Regional Diaper Bank. Several months ago, our contact at the Diaper Bank let us know the period product program would be coming down the pipe. We submitted our application, then waited for the results. We are so pleased to be able to offer these products to the many women in our area who live near or below the poverty line. Our goal is to provide products to women in South County. Our pantry is one of only five pantries chosen to launch this project.
Distributing diapers and period products is a very easy volunteer job. Two people can easily cover a shift. If you are interested in distributing diapers and period products during the week, please contact me. Flexible days and hours are available. Thank you for your interest and support!

by Maureen McNair
Bob, who is physically disabled, lives in a two bedroom mobil home he rents with four strangers in south Chula Vista.
When Consuela’s son was born disabled, her husband left the family. She continues to care for her teenage son as a single parent and is their sole support.
Food prices are just too high for Manuel, who works full time, to pay rent and feed his wife and four children.
Last Saturday, our South Bay Food Pantry had its busiest food distribution to date. We broke the 200 families mark for the first time and gave away food to 204 heads of household.

by Maureen McNair
Earlier this month, Feeding San Diego (FSD) made an offer I couldn’t refuse. They are now delivering food to us every week! This is a really big deal for two reasons: the pantry does not own a truck and sourcing tons of food every week is time-consuming work with no guarantee of success.
During the pandemic last year, FSD had waived their rule that they would not bring on any new pantries to supply with food, and offered to deliver food the first and third Fridays each month. The first and third Fridays food and delivery was arranged as an incredible surprise by another pantry manager whose family has hosted a food distribution for 30 years. She saw the need for food in our community and our church’s commitment to providing it. Those deliveries have been very gratefully received by pantry volunteers, client, and me.

by Maureen McNair
​Even though the Food Pantry volunteers received a key for our new suite at the beginning of the month, we could not move in immediately. The owner of the strip mall where we are located sent in a plumber, carpet cleaner, and property manager to do some work. Even after he sent in a carpet cleaner and released too many cans of air freshener, the suite was still visibly dirty. We were also concerned the air freshener was not solving, but only masking, odors we originally detected. The suite had been a marshall arts studio for many years.

by Maureen McNair
​Imagine my surprise earlier this month when Feeding San Diego asked me to train people wanting to start new food pantries. Only two years ago this month, I was a newbie, traipsing around Chula Vista with Rev. Andrea Travers, a facilitator for Beloved Conversations and the South Bay Wisdom Circle. We were gathering information about food insecurity from local social service agencies.
​I have met lots of food pantry managers who have been running pantries for decades. I continue to learn a lot from their expertise. And, our volunteers just started to clean out a closet-sized junk room at our South Bay campus in December 2019 that would be the start of our food pantry. So, we have been operating less than two years.

But, at the request of Feeding San Diego, I have now started to train someone who wants to open a food pantry at her church in Santee. We’ve met on the phone. And, last Saturday, she came to our pantry for a tour of how we have set up our operations. Our volunteers were singing loudly while bagging green beans, so they made the work look fun and easy.
Feeding San Diego, the region’s largest food bank, is the local affiliate of Feeding America. They have done a lot for our pantry during the pandemic and months of severe food shortages. My contact at Feeding San Diego has been a Neighborhood Coordinator. She was promoted to management at the end of September and reached out to me the first week of October. I am really grateful for the opportunity to give back to an organization that has been so supportive to us.
She had another welcome surprise for us last week too. If all goes according to plan, I will share that news with you next week. Meanwhile, thank you all so much for your continued generosity. We would not be living our values the way we do without each of you.

by Maureen McNair
The food pantry volunteers finally have a key to our new suite! Here are a couple photos of the raw space. The suite we will move into is in the same strip mall where the South Bay worship space and social hall are located. It is adjacent to the social hall. Thanks to your continued generosity, the food pantry now has 810 square feet of dedicated space. We do not know when we will move yet because the exterior door needs to be replaced, internal repairs need to be done, and tenant improvements also need to be taken care of. 

by Maureen McNair
Did you know that almost every Saturday, the food pantry volunteers give our clients about 400 - 500 pounds of food we receive from Starbucks?
 We give away wraps, paninis, muffins, salads, yogurt, desserts, and any other kind of food Starbucks sells. Our clients love receiving this food. And, we like giving it to them so the heads of household who have stood in a long line can go home and feed their families right away without having to do food preparation.
 We have come about receiving the donations from Starbucks in quite a circuitous way.

by Maureen McNair
​Every Friday morning, the Smart & Final on Main Street in Chula Vista gives us the opportunity to ask if they have a food donation for our pantry. Sometimes, the store has nothing to give. Sometimes, they will have a hundred pounds or so of meat. Volunteers will drive to the store in their cars, pick up the donation, dispose of meat in trays that have been punctured, and stash the rest in our freezers. Not so this past Friday.

by Maureen McNair
​Thanks to your continuous and generous donations, the South Bay Food Pantry will be moving into a new suite immediately adjacent to the strip mall suites currently housing the worship space and social hall. 
​But, when are we moving? 
We don’t have a move-in date yet!

by Maureen McNair
​A bottle of scented hand sanitizer. A five dollar bill tucked in an envelope. Homemade food. These are just some of the gifts our pantry clients give to our pantry and volunteers on Saturdays. 
This past Saturday, one of our existing clients told me he owned a signage business and offered to make more laminated numbers similar to the ones we hand out to clients so we can practice a first-come, first-served food distribution. He offered signs and banners too. All for free.

by Maureen McNair
​Every winter for many years, the volunteers at our Hillcrest Interfaith Shelter Network site, which hosts homeless guests for two weeks, prepare for our guests’ arrival by watching an instructional video. The video does not tell volunteers how to organize meals or set up cots we borrow. Instead, the video features homeless guests from prior shelters who speak to us directly about how to engage them in conversation.

by Maureen McNair
​Thanks so to hundreds of individual donors, our South Bay Food Pantry will continue operating in a new space once in-person services resume at our Chula Vista campus. 
We are not moving far, either. We are staying in the same strip mall as the worship space and social hall. In fact, we will be moving into the suite adjacent to the social hall. So, our South Bay church is expanding its footprint. 

by Maureen McNair
​One of the things weighing on my mind as I planned the food distribution for last week was whether or not the food pantry would end up with more perishable food than we could distribute. We had over 1,800 pounds of fresh potatoes, apples, and tomatoes, a few hundred pounds of food from Starbucks, and about 400 pounds of bread. On any given Saturday, we can easily distribute that much perishable food along with many hundreds of pounds of frozen meat and dry goods. 

By Maureen McNair
​Feeding San Diego recently gifted our food pantry with over 2,800 pounds of watermelons. Our pantry clients were thrilled to receive such a classic summer fruit. 
Our volunteers worked too hard for words! I am calling out Steve Gelb here, with gratitude. Steve rode his bike from Mission Valley to Chula Vista, lifted many melons, then rode his bike back home!

By Maureen McNair
​The City of Chula Vista honored the pantry with a public service award during this first full year of operations. Here is what some of our amazing volunteers accomplished during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
The South Bay Food Pantry continues to squat in the three suites that comprise the Chula Vista campus which has been closed to other uses during the pandemic. A team of over 50 volunteers have distributed over 300,000 pounds of free food and over 33,550 free diapers.

by Maureen McNair
​While our church, communities, and State have been closed down for most of the last 14 months, the volunteers at our South Bay Food Pantry have lived our values, created beloved community, and established an institution. Our food pantry is the future of our congregational life. The fact that our food pantry is our future became quite clear to me during the two weeks I was taking a stay-cation. I cannot wait for those of you who have never visited us to see what we have created. It will knock your socks off!

by Nina Douglass
Jeff and I are excited to join other South Bay Food Pantry volunteers in covering Maureen McNair’s much-deserved staycation from the pantry. 
Have you visited the pantry on a Saturday morning during distribution? it’s impossible to distinguish shoppers from volunteers. In fact, some shoppers choose  to volunteer, and some offer small donations to express their appreciation. Some volunteers and workers in the strip mall are also shoppers, along with others.

By Maureen McNair
​Several months ago, Rev. Kathleen Owens asked me what the process was I used to run the food pantry. I told her it has been like laying down the tracks while the train is coming. So, after 17 straight months of creating and operating the food pantry, I am taking a vacation the last two weeks in May. I have planned a stay-cation. 
The food pantry, diaper distribution, congregant food delivery, and feeding people experiencing homelessness will continue thanks to spouses Nina Douglass and Jeff Kline, who have agreed to substitute for me. Many of you may not have met them because they joined our church during the pandemic.

by Maureen McNair
​Saturday pantry volunteers are likely to observe that I live in fear of excess produce. It is perishable and, while the pantry has some refrigeration space, we do not have sufficient refrigeration space to store very much fresh produce for a week. We want food to go into the community right away, not into landfills.