A volunteer appreciation soup supper for the 60 volunteers at the Perry Food Pantry was held Tuesday evening at Mt. Olivet Church in Perry.
The volunteers were joined by their spouses and a sprinkling of donors and other friends of the Perry Food Pantry for a hearty meal of potato soup, chicken noodle soup and chili, with cookies to top it off.
Following the supper, Food Pantry Site Manager Lou Hoger and Volunteer Coordinator Lois Hoger delivered annual reports on the charitable enterprise and discussed future plans.
A business meeting was then held of the board of directors of the pantry, officially known as the Perry Area Emergency Food Council.
Lou Hoger’s report opened with a letter, reproduced below.
Dear Donors, Volunteers, Board of Directors and Friends,
This is our first Annual Report since relocating the Perry Area Food Pantry to its present location. We moved Thursday-Saturday, March 17-19, and held our first Pantry on Tuesday, March 22. Whew! On Wednesday, March 16, the Rev. Max Phillips sent me a
text and told me that due to the identification of dangerous levels of mold, we should move as soon as possible. I told him we would do that, and he responded, “Great. And if you could be out by this weekend that would be fine.” We immediately sent out an email, posted something on Facebook and had a tremendous outpouring of Volunteer support.
Nothing left the old Pantry before the closing of the Thursday Pantry. Some carts were full, at the ready. However, we moved no carts until shelves could be moved and put in place. That took lots of muscle and coordination. We had two shifts of Volunteers on Friday, and one finished up on Saturday. Now we have been enjoying the comfort and practicality of a great site to receive and serve customers as well as a great place for our Volunteers
to work and serve.
We cannot adequately thank the Rev. Max Phillips and the Perry Lutheran Homes Board of Directors for the accommodation of our Pantry in a space that has a rental value of $14,400 per year.
We never lose sight of the fact that the heart of our mission is to provide healthy, nutritious food and personal hygiene items to our customers who are experiencing need due to unemployment, layoffs due to health issues or worksite changes, family crises or financial crises, temporary or chronic.
We continue to serve customers whose primary language is English, Spanish, two Eritrean
languages, Burmese (Myanmar) and Thai. We have fewer these days since many have relocated to Des Moines, and now we are able to merely allow them to shop and select the items that they choose.
Through increased Personal Donation, Business and Corporate Gifts, Grants from the Bock
Family Foundation, Catholic Relief Services and St. Martin’s Episcopal Church through the Wiese Foundation, we were able to provide Farmers Market Dollars and Personal Hygiene items such as toilet tissue, toothpaste and brushes, bars of soap, feminine hygiene items, diapers and wipes.
Recently, a local well-known figure, Larry Vodenik, has come aboard as our Webmaster and
Facebook Coordinator, which has increased our outreach and publicity significantly. Our Website is www.perryfoodpantry.org.
As our numbers will show, we served more 127 more households this year over 2021, but 670 more individuals. This shows that more larger families are using the Pantry as the economy has made it more difficult to provide family commodities.
What else is new and ahead for the Perry Area Food Pantry?
- Through cooperation with the Perry Public Library, we have added a mobile library book stand with adult and children’s books and cookbooks.
- lowa State Extension Service has put up a brochure rack, filing it with recipes in
English and Spanish. - The Pantry cooperated with a nonprofit group to help non-citizens to get personal ID cards.
- We are helping the Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center find tutors
for Burmese residents. - Kwik Star is now a Food Bank of lowa Coordinated Donor to our Pantry.
- In coordination with ISU Extension, we are offering our first cooking class Jan. 17.
I want to remind all of you how vital your contributions are to this service and how we seek to be good stewards of the funds you make available to us. We are 100% volunteer staffed, and we put our hearts into fulling our mission on behalf of you and all the people of the Perry Community School District area.
Sincerely,
Lou Hoger, Site Manager
In the last 3 years we served:
- 2020: 446 Different Households/1,619 Persons
- 2021: 249 Different Households/859 Persons;
- 2022: 376 Households/1,529 Persons = an average of 4 persons per household in 2022.
Households using the Pantry in 2022:
- 1-3 times: 260 – 69.1%
- 4-6 times: 62- 16.5%
- 7-9 times: 30- 8%
- 10-12 times: 24-6.4%
Products found at the Pantry in 2022:
- Donated food/hygiene items – 3,200 lbs – Estimated value = $4,800
- Kwik Star donations: 295 Pounds of meat, meal items and bakery items
- The Food Bank of lowa provided: – 18,171 lbs (9.1 tons) for $2,130
-Meat – (canned/frozen) 2,833 lbs (1.4 tons) for $400 – $.18/lbs
-Other – 15,338 lbs (7.67 tons) for $1,730 - Purchased from local merchants – (direct purchases or coupons) $20,869
- Other retail for food – $2,265
- Personal hygiene items purchases – $5,123
- We spent $24.00 per customer and $82.76 per household in 2021.
- We spent $23.26 per customer and $95.58 per household in 2022.
LOOKING AHEAD . . .
Service Delivery: We hope to recruit and train more bilingual volunteers.
Succession Plan: Job Descriptions and Standard Operating Procedures Manual
Outreach and Promotion:
- Advertise the Pantry in laundromats, laundry rooms in apartment complexes, etc.
- Interviews on KDLS reporting our 2022-2023 service
- Articles for the Perry Chief and ThePerryNews.com
- Presentations to Perry’s civic organizations
- Presentations in our churches.
Site Manager: Lou Hoger, call or text 515-570-2975 or email prlhoger@gmail.com
Volunteer Coordinator Lois Hoger presented the following information as part of her annual report.
- A total of more than 60 volunteers served the Pantry in 2022
- Trained 7 store volunteers 2022
- 56 volunteers are actively participating beginning 2023
- 2022 had 100 Pantry shifts for the year
- Each shift consists of 6 volunteers
- 3 volunteers pickup from Hy-Vee, 2 pickup from Kwik Star
- 1 volunteer general maintenance and repair person as needed basis
- 1 Pantry data volunteer and 1 office assistant volunteer
- Website and Facebook Coordinator volunteer
- 6 volunteers drive, load or unload from the Food Bank of Iowa
- 3 volunteers restock shelves and recycle cardboard
- 1 volunteer in charge of organizing deliveries
- 3 team leaders plus a Pantry Site Manager and Volunteer Coordinator
- 10 board members
Other responsibilities of Volunteers:
- Attend annual Civil Rights retraining
- Attend ALICE Active Shooter training through Perry Police Chief
- Accept and shelve donations during shifts
- Repackage items such as diapers and feminine hygiene
- Clean pantry during shifts
- Tolerated Pantry Site Manager and Volunteer Coordinator
Account of annual Volunteer hours:
- Pantry Direct Service to Customers (100 pantry shifts) and training 1,580
- HyVee and Kwik Star deliveries 120
- Food Bank deliveries 75
- Restocking off shift services 2x weekly 150
- Pantry Data Entry, Office Assistant, Web Site & Facebook 100
- Site Manager 850
- Food Council Board Treasurer 75
- Board Members (6 meetings) 120
- March move and clean up and general Maintenance 300APPROXIMATE VOLUNTEER HOURS OF DEDICATED SERVICE: 300 @$10 PER HOUR=$36,700
