SALEM — The Salem Pantry will be able to continue to fill a growing need in the community and expand some of its most important programs after being awarded $128,000 as a recipient during the first round of the state’s Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program.
The grant program was announced in May 2020 as part of a $56 million investment by the Charlie Baker-Karyn Polito Administration to combat urgent food insecurity for Massachusetts families and individuals as a result of COVID-19.
The first round of the grant program includes 26 awards totaling $2,941,838 to fund investments in technology, equipment, increased capacity, and other assistance to help producers distribute food. The Salem Pantry was the only Massachusetts food pantry selected among the 26 awardees.
“It was perfect for us,” said Robyn Burns, executive director of the Salem Pantry. “We’re really ripe for new infrastructure. When we found out we were receiving it we were blown away. It’s really going to help us fill the needs of the community and now we’re able to finish our Shetland Park project.”
That project is the development of a new food storage and distribution warehouse downtown at Shetland Park that will not only help Salem, but the surrounding communities as well.
The warehouse will vastly expand the pantry’s storage capabilities for fresh produce, frozen meats, dairy and eggs and allows partnerships with other North Shore hunger-relief agencies that lack loading docks.
Agencies like LifeBridge, Open Door, Beverly Bootstraps and Good Hope Food Pantry that are looking for additional food storage, cross-docking options or delivery support will be able to use Salem’s Shetland Park facility.
“The way it works is we will receive a delivery from the Greater Boston Food Bank,” Burns said. “When it arrives, we’ll off load and sort things. Then other agencies can arrive and it saves them a trip to Boston, now they can just come to the next town over.”
The grant will also help the Salem Pantry expand its home delivery program in the form of a new cargo van.
“Our home delivery has grown tremendously during the pandemic because people aren’t as comfortable or able to leave their homes. For us it was something that started out small. The Salem Public Health Department and other agencies said they had clients that would be interested in home deliveries. We slowly built it during COVID and it was on the fly. We were doing one day a week with volunteers. We were using our own cars and it was never the efficient way.”
Now a new vehicle will allow the pantry to better help those in need of the service and keep feeding the community for a long time to come.
“It’s really hard to predict what our program’s impact will be and what people will be facing a year from now,” Burns said. “But our projections show that people could be impacted by (the pandemic) for a really long time. We’re planning to sustain this level of assistance as long as we can, and with this grant it’s fabulous. It will help us grow as an organization.”
