Take one step inside the Townie Pride Food Pantry and you’ll realize that it’s more than an empty expression.

Townie Pride, just like hunger, never sleeps.

And if you think a school pantry — run out of a room formerly used by the culinary program in what was once the district’s career and technical education building (now the administration building) — would simply amount to a couple of cardboard boxes thrown into the corner with a “please donate” sign, think again.

This is a full-blown food assistance operation.

“We do shipments, about 120 bags go out weekly to most schools in the district,” said Laina Fonseca, a junior at East Providence High School, and the co-student director of the pantry. “Any of the schools that say they have kids that need assistance, we’ll send bags to.”

Within each of those bags, a family in need will find a variety of items; ingredients to make at least one nutritious meal.

“We try to put a bunch of different things into the bags when they go out,” Fonseca said. “So we try to do a pasta, sauce, or a main kind of thing, and then some kind of protein like chicken or tuna, and then we try to get as much produce or fresh food as we can, but obviously that's harder to get.”

Fonseca has been involved with food drive initiatives in East Providence since around 6th grade, she said, when she and her friend, fellow co-student director of the pantry, Megan Pita, began participating in community drives like the Souper Bowl.

“We both started seeing how much the community wanted to help,” she said. “And then that kind of turned into, ‘Oh, where’s this food going? How can we help more?’ And then since then, I think we both like to do community service. I think both of us really enjoy helping specifically with the food insecurity issue.”

An increasing need

The pantry began about five years ago with seed funding from Stop & Shop. The mission at that time — according to Diana Clarkin, the director of operations for East Providence Schools who coordinates the program and the roughly 20 student volunteers (like Fonseca) — was simply to help feed as many families who have children within district schools as possible.

“It’s more to sustain,” Clarkin said. “It’s not to replace their grocery shopping. It’s more of something to hold them over through the weekends.”

The pantry operates purely on grants and charitable donations, including what has so far been an annual allotment from Stop & Shop. They’ve also received donations from local businesses like Shaws, the East Providence Lions Club, and the Barrington nonprofit Tap-In just kicked in a significant grant of their own for the current year, along with a host of fresh produce.

All told, the pantry costs around $40,000 a year to run, which enables them to buy food year-round to assist families.

“People don’t realize how much money goes into the pantry,” Clarkin said, gesturing to the shelves of dry goods. “We could exhaust all of this by March.”

And as has been experienced by other nonprofit food assistance agencies throughout the country, the level of need seems to be ever increasing. In the first couple of years, the pantry distributed 40 bags to families each week. Now, as Fonseca alluded to earlier, it has tripled.

“This is the most food I’ve seen in the pantry since I’ve been helping here,” Fonseca said, standing among hundreds of canned and boxed food items within the storeroom.

“Do I think it's going to go up even further? Yes,” Clarkin concurred. “We're just getting the word out. Every new school year the principals and the social workers are getting used to the kids, getting to know them. We've already had some calls with staff at the school saying ‘Hey can I add so and so's name? They're in crisis.’”

To distribute the food, Clarkin thought back to COVID, and how the district was able to get meals to kids who normally would receive summer meals and free and reduced lunch at school when all buildings were shuttered. Members of the district’s maintenance team, in the course of their regular duties, deliver bags to the appropriate schools to be distributed to students on the list.

While the program shares storage space with Carl Sweeney’s Hope and Faith charity, which gives out a variety of items to people in need, the Townie Pride Pantry sticks with what it does best, and with what is needed most.

“We try to strictly stay with the food because of the insecurity that seems to be so prevalent, and getting worse,” Clarkin said. “Things cost way too much money now. And if we’re feeling it, I can’t even imagine how someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck is feeling it.”

Want to help?

The best way to assist the Townie Pride Pantry is through monetary donations, as it allows Clarkin to leverage funds to find the best deals on purchasing food; and that can change week to week.

The pantry staff is currently working on getting an electronic link so people can donate directly, but those looking to help after seeing this piece should contact Jeni Fonseca at jrlfdesign@gmail.com, or Diana Clarkin at dclarkin@epschoolsri.com.