When the Diaper Pantry was evolving from Maureen McNair’s idea to a room stacked with cartons of diapers at the South Bay campus, Mindy Hochgesang & her son Sebastian signed on as two of its first volunteers. Since then, Mindy and Sebastian have volunteered monthly at the pantry and Mindy has taken on leadership for the Pantry’s varied needs. She’s deployed a range of skills from the interpersonal to the statistical: recruiting and training volunteers, ordering diapers, wipes and other supplies—many large cartons— from the food bank each week, scheduling volunteers from Hillcrest and South Bay to work the Sunday distribution shifts as well as scheduling volunteers to receive deliveries of diapers and supplies mid-week, documenting and communicating diaper pantry policies and procedures, maintaining the statistics that the food banks, which supply the diapers, require, and the overall coordination and communication. Mindy has been a key person in organizing the teams and assuring that all this happens every week.

By Rhea Kuhlman, Pantry Volunteer
 
Families come in all shapes and sizes at the Food Pantry.  Some are grandparents raising their grandkids.  Some are single parent households or even two parent households.  Some are elderly on fixed incomes, or extended families with 3 or more generations living together. But there’s one thing these families all have in common.  With San Diego rents among the highest in the nation (average $2917/month per rentcafe.com), electricity rates the highest in the U.S. (thanks, SDG&E), and ever-rising food prices, people earning minimum wage or less cannot afford to provide nutritious food for their families.
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By Rhea Kuhlman, Pantry Volunteer
While most of our Food Pantry’s clients have homes, and many have one or more jobs, a few of our clients are unsheltered. Each week, we prepare about five bags of shelf stable food for homeless people, who have special needs due to their lack of a place or equipment to cook meals or store items that need refrigeration.
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Portraits in Generosity highlights our Sustaining Donors, the people who’ve committed to a monthly donation to the South Bay Food Pantry

Louise Titlow and Karen Kircher have given monthly to the South Bay Food Pantry since early 2020. The pantry was all of three months old when Maureen McNair, its founder, told them about it. They knew it was a natural fit with their values.
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Portraits in Generosity highlights our Sustaining Donors, the people who’ve committed to a monthly donation to the South Bay Food Pantry

“It’s the most consequential work that we do as a church community. I want to be a part of it.”

Steve Howard learned about the Food Pantry early in 2020 from Maureen McNair, who founded the Pantry. He knew right away that he wanted to support it. He volunteered as a mid-week bagger, showing up on a weekday morning to move produce like onions and squashes from the five-hundred-pound pallets that the food banks deliver to the individual bags that volunteers distribute on Saturday. He’s always worked for humanitarian causes, and he feels that “what we do matters more than what we believe.” The hands-on work of bagging, which he continues to do every week has grown his understanding of social justice work: “I discovered that I get a lot of satisfaction in directly helping people. I get to see the results.”
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Portraits in Generosity highlights our Sustaining Donors, the people who’ve committed to a monthly donation to the South Bay Food Pantry

​Judy Ramirez, who calls the South Bay campus her church home, is one of the Pantry’s earliest and most loyal donors. She knew Maureen McNair, who founded the Pantry, and learned about the Pantry soon after its launch in December 2019— “people in the South Bay campus were talking about it.” She wrote a check to support its work, and she’s written a check every month since. 

My partner, Karen Kircher and I, Louise Titlow, have been Diaper Pantry volunteers for a year and a half primarily receiving the deliveries every other week on Tuesdays.  Sometimes our shift overlaps with some of the Food Pantry volunteers who bag non perishable food items.  At first, the food bagging team and our diaper delivery team tried to work in our overlapping cramped spaces, but there wasn’t enough room and we kept bumping into each other. We made a compromise, and we now help them bag food and they help us carry and stack boxes. I said how grateful I was for Sue Marberry’s help one day and she said “This is what we do, we help each other.”  We are creating community while working shoulder to shoulder together, and getting to know each other better.  Karen and I have been monthly Sustaining Donors of the Pantry for a few years, and we feel our donation is very well spent, supporting one of our community’s most important programs.

The South Bay Food Pantry is a major success story for First UU San Diego. From its start in December 2020, the Pantry has grown from feeding 20 to 30 people each week to 400 households, about 1200 people, every Saturday. That’s an 800 percent increase! This expansion has been driven by the need in the community, and supported by volunteers from both church campuses, and many of our clients. We have much to be proud of, and much to be grateful for.

By Mindy Hochgesang

“Many hands make work light”….I learned this mantra as part of my son’s Cub Scouts experience but seems to hold very true for how the team that supports the Diaper Pantry (the little sister of the Food Pantry).

Each Sunday, our doors at the Diaper Pantry at the Chula Vista campus open for one hour and typically serve families with a combined total of 60-80 children.  In addition to diapers, families are provided with diaper wipes, menstrual hygiene products for females in the household, and often, bread that has been donated by a local bakery.
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• The South Bay Food Pantry is the largest and fastest growing mission of First UU Church. Fifty-eight church members from both campuses, and 34 volunteers from the wider community, 92 people whose ages range from ten to mid-eighties keep the Pantry running and support First UU’s mission. 

By Sebastian Hochgesang
My name is Sebastian. I'm 10 years old and I go to Martin Elementary.  We have been volunteering at the Diaper Pantry since it first opened. My mom and I started volunteering about a year and a half ago.  In the beginning, it was a little bit hard, but eventually I got used to it.  It was nice to know other people in the community. And my mom and I usually go for a treat after we volunteer. Here are some of the things I help my mom with when we volunteer:
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By Isabella Furth, Pantry Volunteer
For years, I have been fiercely protective of my Saturdays. As it is for many people, my work week is a bustle of work and meetings and activity. Sundays are full of church, music rehearsals, and gearing up for the week to come. But Saturdays! For me, they are the day of rest. There’s time for a swim, a walk, an outing, visiting a friend, doing the crossword, cooking. A time to relax, to think, to slow down and make room for things outside the world of work and consumption and productivity. Saturdays are my Sabbath. For years, when faced with any standing commitment, no matter how important or worthwhile—if it meant giving up Saturdays I would give it a pass. And then in March 2020, Maureen McNair called me, looking for volunteers to work at the food pantry. On Saturdays.
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By Rhea Kuhlman, Pantry Volunteer
In the two and a half years that John and Peggy Holl have been picking up bread donations from Con Pane Bakery at Liberty Station, hauling it to the South Bay Food Pantry in their small car, weighing it, and individually wrapping or bagging each loaf or pastry assortment, they’ve handled about 7,200 pounds of bread, or a little over 3.6 tons.   That’s a lot of tonnage for a couple in their 80s!  Now the Holls are passing the torch to a new generation of volunteers, to satisfy their children, who worry about their night driving on the freeway.

By Isabella Furth, Pantry Volunteer
Did you know that the parking lot at the Chula Vista campus/food pantry is in fact a five-dimensional shape-stacking Tetris alley that defies the laws of time and space? It’s a modestly sized strip-mall parking lot, with a single entrance/exit and maybe 75 parking spots total. During our Saturday distributions about a dozen of those spaces are blocked off to allow room for deliveries and our lineup and registration areas. Another handful are reserved for customers at Carmen’s beauty salon and Alfredo’s deli, our wonderful and supportive neighbors.
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By Nina D, South Bay Food Pantry Volunteer
In late 2019, when former FUUSD board member Maureen McNair first engaged us in launching the South Bay Food Pantry, neither my husband Jeff nor I had been involved in such a project before. I anticipated distributing mushy canned green beans and other basic (and unappetizing) canned goods, and wondered how much difference such items could make.
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By Pantry Volunteer Rhea Kuhlman

There was a lot going on at the Pantry as we built up to an exciting Dia de Los Muertos week distribution.  The Sunday before, we finally got our gigantic almost-new commercial refrigerator, transported on Valerie Jaque’s even more giant (and ancient, and extremely green) horse trailer, appropriately dubbed The Pickle.  A hearty team of volunteers, including Robert, Manny, and Jim, valiantly wrestled the old fridge, now hobbling on its very last legs, out the door and adroitly maneuvered the new fridge in, accompanied by vociferous instructions from our devoted team of back seat drivers.
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By Nina D., South Bay Pantry Volunteer
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The South Bay Food Pantry has grown in many ways since it was founded by Maureen McNair three years ago. The number of clients benefitting from the variety of food items, period products, Covid tests and infant and adult diapers we provide has increased to over 300 families each week.  The volunteer contingent has also increased, from a handful of FUUSD-connected individuals to a large group of FUUSD and South-Bay based volunteers active throughout the week.

by Valerie Jaques, Pantry Coordinator
I started with the pantry about 2 years ago, when Tony Bianca shared on Facebook a plea for someone with a truck to help with a weekly large shopping trip at the San Diego Food Bank. I said, sure, why not, at least for a few months I should be able to handle it. I’m one of very few members of First Church who happens to own a large pickup truck. Might as well make use of it to help my community.  Somehow, I am now the Pantry Coordinator.

by Rhea Kuhlman, Pantry Volunteer
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Around 7:30 each Saturday morning, an enormous white truck rumbles into the parking lot at 970 Broadway in Chula Vista, and the driver starts unloading pallets.  Out pour cases of fresh fruits and vegetables – strawberries, melons or plums in the summer, apples or pears in the winter – and squash, potatoes, cabbages and tomatoes, depending on the season.  The truck driver then unloads pallets of dry goods – maybe tuna and beans, oatmeal and pasta or rice. On a good day, there’s boxed milk, too. Each case of food is carefully placed on pallets so that no food ever touches the ground.

By Rhea Kuhlman, South Bay Food Pantry Volunteer

Church member Adrienne Kaplan wanted to do something for people who don’t have a lot of the material advantages that she and her husband Matt are fortunate to have, so she volunteered to help out at the Food Pantry.  Every Friday morning for the past year, Adrienne has picked up food from a Food for Less market in Chula Vista that would otherwise have been disposed of.  It’s food that may be nearing its “Best By” date but is still perfectly good, or food that is judged to be surplus for a variety of other reasons. On a good day, she reports, she gets lots of frozen meat and chicken, foods which are sometimes in short supply and highly sought after by pantry clients. She often retrieves bread or frozen dinners. At the store, she carefully checks the temperature of any meat or dairy products to be sure they’ve been stored safely, and then checks the temps again as she weighs the food she received that day and stores it safely at the Pantry.  This record keeping is important to comply with state law.  There’s a lot of food available, and some days, she says, food is stacked up to the ceiling in her four-door sedan.
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by Nina Douglass, South Bay Food Pantry Volunteer

A very active and committed South Bay Food Pantry volunteer was surprised to be asked recently how much she is paid for her pantry work.  All who work at the pantry are volunteers!  No one receives monetary compensation for their hours of work, nor reimbursement for the use of their vehicle or gas expenses for trips to retrieve food (though reimbursement for such expenses would be provided to anyone who requested it.)
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