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. 

By Maureen McNair
McNair
Our homeless outreach program began by complete accident. To make a long story short, for the last few weekends, we have been providing food to between 80 - 120 people experiencing homelessness. Here is how this part of our pantry story started.
Regular blog readers might recall that an anonymous opera singer donated over 2,000 pounds of food to us which he collected through a food drive. It turns out that a noticeable amount of that food was suitable to distribute to people who are experiencing homelessness.

By Maureen McNair
Twelve hundred cars drove through the North Island Credit Union Amphitheater to receive free food the last day of March. The Amphitheater, located off Hwy 805 and Main Street in Chula Vista, was the sight of the first of two massive food distributions Feeding San Diego is holding in Chula Vista. The next one is tomorrow.

By Maureen McNair
Not long ago, I received an email from someone identifying himself only as an opera singer. The opera singer was offering to donate 85 pounds of food to the pantry from a food drive. Could I drive into San Diego to pick it up?
​I agree to pick up the donation, but since I did not know the donor, I asked another pantry volunteer to come with me. So one Saturday after a long day of preparing for the food distribution and handing out food, we drove to our meeting place.

By Maureen McNair
​Every Saturday morning around 8:30 AM, a dedicated group of young adults start drifting into the pantry.  
For nearly a year now, Elias Malouf, the first young adult to volunteer at the pantry, has come in to set up tables and start bagging fresh produce. He stays for an hour, then leaves for a martial arts class.

By Maureen McNair
Before we started the South Bay Food Pantry, I really never gave any thought to the difference between a pantry and a bank. But, the distinction is so important that, for instance, the Regional Diaper Bank prohibits us by written contract from calling ourselves a diaper bank. We can use other names, such as a diaper pantry or a diaper distribution, but not the word “bank."

By Maureen McNair
​A year ago this last Sunday in February, some pantry volunteers shared with the congregants at the Hillcrest campus that our South Bay campus was opening a food pantry. I spent six hours on the Hillcrest campus that day talking to 17 additional people who wanted to volunteer. About two weeks later, the governor issued the first stay at home order because of the covid-19 virus. All the volunteers eventually quit except one.

By Maureen McNair
Have you been looking for a way to volunteer for the South Bay Food Pantry without working inside the pantry or at the food distribution itself? We are looking for a few drivers to join our team of food delivery volunteers. We have a few church families to whom we deliver food every Saturday. We are looking to expand our team of drivers who would pick up boxed or bagged food at the pantry them deliver it to homes. Volunteers only work the Saturdays for which it is convenient for them. Pick up and delivery time is a bit flexible.

By Maureen McNair
​​Our hard working volunteers handed out food for over 3,300 individuals last month at our southwestern Chula Vista pantry. Our main pantry clients are families and individuals. 
I wanted to start our pantry in the 91911 zip code because I knew they community needed more food. We do have clients come from outside the neighborhood, but we are filling a void in a location where there simply has not been enough food flowing into the community.

By Maureen McNair
​​I Love to Glean is a start up, non-profit food bank located in Chula Vista less than two miles from our South Bay Food Pantry. I am thrilled to share with you that I Love to Glean is also the recipient of the Sunday generosity offerings for February and March.
I Love to Glean is the brainchild of Karen Clay, a visionary and activist who currently lives in Imperial Beach. Karen is a retired event organizer. South Bay Food Pantry volunteers recognize her behind her mask when they see her long gray hair and ancient red pick up truck. ​
Karen created this non-profit food bank to rescue the tons of edible food currently going to landfills. I Love to Glean does not distribute rescued food directly to individuals. Instead, they provide that food to pantries, and pantries distribute the food to people experiencing food insecurity. Currently, Karen works with about three dozen pantries. 
Karen’s idea is brilliant and one whose time has come. ​