Three days a week, residents queue up at the Portland Open Bible Community Pantry on 92nd avenue to receive free boxes of food containing fresh produce, meat, bread and other grocery staples. Executive director and founder Betty Brown said the pantry was created eight years ago to address a “food desert” in Southeast Portland. In 2021, the pantry used a grant from the Oregon Food Bank to launch an online ordering system for clients to select food items for drive-through pickup. Last fall, the nonprofit partnered with Providence Health to stock a local clinic with a food pantry so that patients could leave with a bag of groceries to meet dietary or nutritional needs. Betty Brown and Olivia Estrada, a mother and client of the Portland Open Bible Community Pantry, join us to talk about hunger, food insecurity and the impact the pantry is having in Southeast Portland.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Three days a week, residents line up at the Portland Open Bible Community Pantry on Southeast 92nd Avenue to receive free boxes of fresh produce, meat, bread and other grocery staples. Executive Director Betty Brown founded the Pantry eight years ago. It has only grown since then. Betty Brown joins us now along with Olivia Estrada, Happy Valley resident, who is one of the Pantry’s clients. Welcome to you both.
Betty Brown / Olivia Estrada: Thank you.
Miller: Betty Brown, how did this pantry come to be? Why start it eight years ago?
Brown: Well, we belong to Portland Open Bible Church and we were just doing our church thing every week. And what happened is that we had three consecutive break-ins into the church one summer. And we noticed, after a while, that each and every time someone broke into the church, they were just stealing food. All the equipment, everything else was left. But the refrigerators were empty because they stole food out of it. Based on that, we realized, you know what, there seems to be a need that’s here. And that’s how the Pantry got started.
Miller: And why were you the right people to fill that? You could have said, ‘hey Oregon Food Bank, there’s a problem.’ But you did it yourselves?
Brown: Yeah, totally. Of course. We didn’t even think of asking anybody else to do it. They were coming to our campus, they were coming to our church and why hand it off to someone else if they were coming here for what they needed. So we never even thought of handing it over to somebody else. But I do have to tell you when we did decide to do that because we don’t have a clue how to do it, someone did say ‘hey why don’t you call Oregon Food Bank? They’ll tell you what to do’ and they absolutely did.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the different communities that you serve?
Brown: Yeah. That’s the most exciting thing about the Pantry. We serve so many different ethnic groups. So we have a very large Chinese community. We have a big Vietnamese, a big Russian, African Americans, Latinos. We serve just about everything that you find in Portland.
Miller: And being based in one of the more diverse parts of Portland as well. Does that mean that you have to or you choose to provide culturally specific foods so people can get the kinds of foods they actually want to eat?
Brown: Yeah. That’s one of the things that I think it’s so great about our Pantry. From the beginning, the Oregon Food Bank has just kind of told us it’s important that people be able to choose the food they want. And so, given the diversity of people that we serve, I totally cannot provide for a Chinese person what we would naturally provide for an African American person. And so at our Pantry, we’ve always felt it’s important for people to have choice. So when people come to our pantry, they literally go and they create their own food boxes by choosing what they want in it. And it’s very very diverse. People, based on their ethnicity, do eat very differently and it’s great to watch.
Miller: Olivia Estrada, what was it like for you and your family before you found this Pantry?
Estrada: Well my kids, the twins, they’re 11 now, started getting older and eating so much more. So there were a lot of nights where I felt like they weren’t getting as much as they would like to eat and that broke my heart. So I was like we need to start looking for places we can go.
Miller: I’ve heard this before from parents who made the decision to just eat less than they needed because their children were their priority. Did that mean that you would go hungry sometimes?
Estrada: Absolutely.
Miller: Why this particular pantry? I know that you live in Happy Valley which is not super far from this part of Southeast Portland but are there no choices closer to you?
Estrada: There are other choices. This place just happened to be very welcoming and very kind. And being able to choose the kinds of foods that we want was super important. They have a lot of organic options which is really nice and we don’t get to eat as much organic stuff as we would like. So that’s huge.
Miller: Olivia, you go about once a week now with your kids. What are those trips like?
Estrada: They’re very much part of our daily routine. We know it’s Thursday and it’s time to go. It’s almost like a field trip for us.
Miller: We just heard from Olivia that it’s welcoming. How have you set up the feel of this pantry?
Brown: I just loved what she just said. She and I haven’t talked before. And yeah, I really believe that people don’t get up in the morning and say, ‘hey, let’s go to a pantry and have a great time,’ like you do at Disneyland. They come to a pantry because they’re in need. And so from the inception of our Pantry, we’ve just always believed that it’s important for people to feel like this is a good thing. We don’t want people to feel shame. We don’t want people to feel like ‘I’m a loser.’ We don’t want any of that because, you know what, any of us, some crazy diagnosis you get hit with, you might end up in a pantry line to make ends meet. And so from the beginning we’ve always told our volunteers, our staff that we’re going to make sure everyone that comes here leaves here just happy, well fed, and I’m so thankful eight years later it continues to have that feel.
Miller: I mean, in a sense, Olivia, what Betty is talking about is the stigma which can be a challenge, in terms of people who need certain services actually taking advantage of them. Have you felt that?
Estrada: I did in the beginning and I think the stigma of not having my children fed was way more for me. That was more of something I wanted to avoid. And so it was not really a question after that. And after a while you realize you’re just going and feeding your kids. There shouldn’t be any stigma in that at all.
Miller: Betty Brown, so you did reach out to the Oregon Food Bank when you started to get their advice. Where do you get the food that you give away now? Where does it come from?
Brown: In the beginning, the Oregon Food Bank just really encouraged us to go knock on doors. And so New Seasons Market, we knocked there, they opened to us, Grocery Outlet. But Oregon Food Bank also has us calling a partner agency right now. They connect partner agencies with organizations that used to deliver to them. So we have three or four, or more Safeways that we get food from. And I know we get food from Target and so yeah, just organizations around us. And of course just people. Farmers will call and say, ‘hey, we have a whole bunch of apples. You want some apples?’ And so yeah, I think the longer you stay doing this, the more the community gets to know you. And so we just kind of get phone calls saying, ‘hey, we have a truckload of _____’ and we always take it. We always take it.
Miller: How much have you grown, in terms of the number of clients you are serving and the amount of food you’re giving out in any given week, over the course of the last eight years?
Brown: Well, I know that the first year we were going, we served for the whole year. We started on January 13 to be exact. And we served 545 people that whole year. This past year, 2022, we served over 61,000.
Miller: From 500 to 61,000, a gigantic increase. And that’s from the very beginning. The pandemic was more recent. Did you see an increase during the pandemic?
Brown: Oh totally. We saw the lines that were down the street, we had to pivot and take all we did outdoors because of keeping everybody safe. But I think one of the things that also has caused our growth is that we just had to think - I’m a nurse by trade - and remember near the end of the fall of 2022 I kept thinking there’s so many elderly people that were in line at the Pantry and I knew the cold weather was coming. I didn’t want elderly people having to stand outside so I spoke to some people who are on my team and I said I wish we could create a Pantry box that was diverse for people that they can just drive up, put in the back of the car.
And through the help and support of Oregon Food Bank, who helped us launch it, we created the made-to-order drive-thru Pantry food box. And you can go online at our website. You can choose your language of choice. I think we have five different languages on there. You can create your Pantry box, literally what you want. You get an email confirmation. You can pull up to our Pantry and that box that you ordered is put in the back of your car. It’s great. But that’s also caused the increase of our numbers.
Miller: You mentioned that you’re a nurse. Has that informed the way you think about the food you’re giving out?
Brown: Oh yes, for sure. I believe that, I’ve seen all my life, that good nutrition is everything, There’s nothing that can compare to be healthy. And so I want everyone that comes to the Pantry, especially children - and like your children - kids can’t compete in school if they can’t eat right, if they don’t have milk, if they don’t have dairy, if they don’t have fresh fruits and vegetables you cannot expect them to go to school and get good grades. You can’t expect moms to be able to do what they do. You can’t expect the elderly to get their diabetes in check, their cardiac disease in check, if they can’t afford the food to eat. So yeah, nursing totally has helped the Pantry be what it is.
Miller: Olivia, what do you want listeners to know right now about what it’s like to experience food insecurity or hunger?
Estrada: That it is totally preventable. There’s so many resources, not just this one, but they’re out there and there’s no reason to go hungry.
Miller: Do you see a path forward for yourself and your family right now where you wouldn’t need to rely on this important service?
Estrada: I hope for that. Definitely. And that day may come, but we might use it just for sustainability reasons. It’s a good resource.
Miller: Betty Brown, what are your hopes for the future? I mean you talked about huge expansions over the last eight years. How much more do you plan or hope to expand going forward?
Brown: Well, to be totally honest, we need to build a building. We’re located in Portland Open Bible Church, but we’ve taken over, it feels like, way too much of the Church. And so our hope is to build a building on the property because where we are is a food desert and people need us to stay where we’re at. But that is ultimately our desire - to build a building that can accommodate the growth that we even have right now.
Miller: Because what started there out of necessity has sort of taken over a big chunk of the original purpose of the church’s operations?
Brown: Exactly, that’s right.
Miller: Betty Brown and Olivia Estrada, thanks very much.
Estrada: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Betty Brown is the executive director of Portland Open Bible Community Pantry. Olivia Estrada, who lives in Happy Valley with her family, is one of their clients.
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