Portage County residents in need of assistance with food access are getting a couple of new options to make it easier to connect with resources over the next month.
New pop-up pantries in Garrettsville and Randolph Township are intended to help get food to people in areas with less access. The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, whose eight-county service area includes Portage will deploy a refrigerated truck and work with community groups to coordinate the pop-up's.
“The food bank provides the food, the partner provides the space, typically a parking lot, and also the volunteers,” according to Raven Gayheart, director of marketing and public relations at the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank “And so it's a community effort in which a variety of partners work hard to meet the needs within our region.”
The newest pop-up's are the result of a collaboration between the Portage County District Library and the food bank.
Annie Zwisler, public relations and development manager for the library, said she was inspired by an earlier pop-up in Ravenna.
“Portage County is a really big mix of both farm communities, small towns, villages, and cities,” Zwisler said, “so being able to have it in one of our smaller areas of Garrettsville I think was a really big deal.”
The disruption to SNAP benefits caused by this fall's federal government shutdown which lasted 43 days also motivated her to reach out to the food bank, she said.
The library held its first pop-up pantry on Nov. 7. According to Zwisler, the library’s volunteers in Garrettsville provided food to 150 families.
“When the cars started lining up, I realized that we really did help fill that need within our county or at least help just make a dent in where people are hungry and people will need those supplies and food,” Zwisler said. “The health district, we were told, had to turn people away because of the amount of people that are in need of food with the lapse of SNAP and benefits like that.”
The next pop-up location for Portage County will be at the Garrettsville Library on Dec. 5 from 9 to 11 a.m. A pop-up pantry is scheduled at Friendship Bible Church in Randolph Township on Dec. 15 from 9 to 11 a.m.
The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank has more details on pop-up food pantries across their eight-county service area on their website.