Collaborative food pantry launches to fill void in Flushing
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Members of the Flushing Food Collaborative, a food pantry launched in Downtown Flushing after a major food pantry was evicted from its headquarters in the neighborhood last month. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Around 20 volunteers chatted with each other as they ate lunch in a parking lot behind a synagogue in Downtown Flushing on a recent Thursday this month.
They had just spent the past three hours prepping around 250 bags of groceries, and were getting ready to hand them out to seniors in the neighborhood for the next several hours.
It was their fourth week of trying to figure out how to run a food pantry in a neighborhood home to a number of low-income seniors who previously received their weekly groceries from a massive food pantry that was evicted from its NYCHA headquarters in Flushing last month.
“We’re still just trying to figure out how to do this efficiently,” said John Choe, the executive director of the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce, one of the groups that has joined in to create what’s now known as the Flushing Food Collaborative.
The food pantry, which operates out of the Free Synagogue of Flushing on Sanford Avenue and Kissena Boulevard, is a joint effort between a number of local organizations, including the Flushing Hate Free Zone, MinKwon Center for Community Action, the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce, Kissena Synergy, the Flushing Interfaith Council, the First Baptist Church of Flushing and UA3.
Though a number of the groups had been in discussion about forming a food pantry prior to the collaborative’s creation, they were kicked into action after La Jornada, a major food pantry that claims to feed 10,000 families per week in Western Queens, was evicted from the Bland Houses at the end of July. La Jornada, which is still without a permanent home, temporarily relocated to an Elmhurst high school at the beginning of August, leaving many of the seniors who once utilized it without a place to get free food.
“We have probably 1,000 seniors that don't have food from Flushing because of this,” Pedro Rodrgiuez, the executive director of La Jornada, told the Eagle earlier this month. “The young people are coming [to the new location] because young people can travel and can walk and it's the summer – it’s okay.”
He added: “The seniors are the ones who are suffering.”
Though the city and the federal government have, in recent months, taken a more hands-off approach when it comes to COVID-19, many of the effects of the virus – particularly the economic effects – remain.
Flushing was hit particularly hard by the pandemic. A recent report from the New York State Comptroller Thomas DeNapoli found that the neighborhood, home to the largest Asian American population and one of the largest senior populations in the city, suffered the effects of the pandemic more than most neighborhoods in New York City.
And throughout the five boroughs, food insecurity has been on the rise. A July report from the Food Bank For New York, a network of over 800 soup kitchens and pantries, found that demand for food increased by 93 percent in 2021 in New York City.
The increase in demand comes as food prices throughout the country are also on the rise. Foods purchased at the grocery store were over 13 percent more expensive in July of this year than they were in July of last year, according to the USDA. It’s an historic jump in prices – in 2020 and 2021, grocery store food prices increased between 3.5 and 4.5 percent when compared to the years prior.
“There’s a high level of food insecurity in Downtown Flushing [and we asked ourselves] what can we do about it?” said Hailie Kim, an organizer at the MinKwon Center for Community Action. “How can we create a multi-racial multi-ethnic coalition to work toward the common goal of feeding our neighbors? That’s the goal of our food collaborative.”
“I mean, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what La Jornada was doing, but we're trying to make headway,” Kim added.
A line begins to form outside of the newly-created Flushing Food Collaborative, a food pantry launched in Downtown Flushing after a major food pantry was evicted from its headquarters in the neighborhood last month. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
The Flushing Food Collaborative is operating largely without help from the city’s government.
It is funded almost entirely by MinKwon. Although the organization has received funding through local and state government, MinKwon is paying for the food upfront, costing them several thousand dollars per week. Their current funding would only allow them to run the pantry for a little more than three and a half months.
They’ve begun searching and applying for grants, and have attempted to bring in local leaders, including the local City Councilmember in the area.
Councilmember Sandra Ung, who represents Downtown Flushing, did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment.
Beyond the funding, the collaborative has pulled in help from around the community.
Kim and others have helped spearhead the outreach. They’ve created fliers to get word out about the pantry to both volunteers and those who may need access to the food and they’ve reached out to other local leaders, business and organizations about ways to get involved.
Leona Chin has been charged with coordinating the volunteers. Chin, who has experience recruiting volunteers with the Kissena Synergy Velodrome Friends Group, said the number of people showing up to help pack and distribute groceries has grown each of the first four weeks of the collaborative.
“We were able to cobble together volunteers for our first pantry four weeks ago and then after, through word of mouth, we were able to bring more volunteers,” she said. “We’ve been fortunate.”
Mabel Butron, a Flushing resident, previously volunteered at La Jornada, helping to hand out food once a week. She’s now taken to helping out at the Flushing Food Collaborative, alongside her two sons.
Butron knows what it’s like to be in need of groceries – she first learned about La Jornada after showing up there to receive food for her family in 2017. After a while, one of the staff members at the pantry asked if she wanted to help out and she’s been volunteering ever since.
“I like to give, I like helping the community,” Butron said. “It’s like giving someone what someone once gave to me.”
“It’s my time to do it,” she added.
Packed grocery bags filled with fruits and vegetables sit outside of the Free Synagogue of Flushing as part of the Flushing Food Collaborative’s pantry distribution. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
The search for a space for the food collaborative to operate out of went far smoother than that of the search currently underway for La Jornada, which requires a much larger space than the food collaborative.
The synagogue had partnered with several of the organizations in the past and not only opened its doors to them to launch the pantry, but became an active partner.
“There's a void that needs to be filled and that's why we stepped in,” said Souksavat Soukhaseum, the director of community affairs at the Free Synagogue of Flushing. “But no one organization can feed Flushing alone, that's why it's a collective or collaborative.”
While the group has come together in an attempt to provide the pantry service that many in the neighborhood require, there are still limitations. They aren’t able to provide a full week’s worth of groceries, as La Jornada was, and are only able to provide supplementary supplies, like fruits and vegetables.
They’ve also had to cap the number of people they serve at 250 – last week, several people had to be turned away.
The pantry is growing and more organizations and businesses are getting involved, however, Choe said there is a ceiling to what can be achieved by the collaborative.
“There's a lot of work involved and I feel that this isn't something that the community should be burdened with,” he said. “Government should be stepping in.”
