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	Clients pick up bags of groceries at the Community Cupboard food pantry at St. Paul's, Kansas City. The cupboard soon will be able to help more people thanks to new equipment provided by a $12,500 grant from the United Thank Offering. --Photo by Deacon Gail Reynolds

UTO grant helps expand Kansas City food pantry

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

The Community Cupboard food pantry at St. Paul’s, Kansas City, which exists to help people in need, has received a little help of its own — a $12,500 grant from the United Thank Offering.

The money already is making a difference in the pantry’s operations. A newly installed commercial refrigerator and freezer mean clients can pick up fresh beef and chicken along with non-perishable food items.

The grant also will fund other improvements that are critical to the pantry’s mission, according to Jay Lehnertz, executive director of Episcopal Community Services, the Kansas City-based agency of which the pantry is a part.

A conveyor system will ease food delivery to the pantry in the church basement from trucks at the street level. Plans also call for more shelving units, a new computer and the addition of a drinking fountain for clients.

Lehnertz said these improvements will give the pantry more capacity to serve people in need — and that need is great. Clients come from Kansas City, Kan., neighborhoods where 16 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, a number 60 percent higher than the statewide average.

In a normal week, the pantry serves upwards of 60 families, representing about 200 people. Lehnertz said more and more people come seeking help, but the pantry is stretched to its limits.

“We could easily provide double that amount if we had the product and the volunteers,” he said. “We are looking at how we can increase those. Our goal for 2008 is to increase our capacity.”

In addition to fresh meat and canned and boxed food items, the pantry stocks toiletries such as shampoo and toothpaste, paper products like toilet paper and paper towels, and detergent and other household goods.

Areawide ministry

Lehnertz said the pantry, which has been in operation for more than 30 years, has become the focus of outreach efforts of churches across the region. Four of them — St. Paul’s; St. Michael’s, Mission; St. Thomas, Overland Park; and St. Aidan’s, Olathe — all had input into the UTO grant application, which was written by Erica Kratofil, ECS’s development director.

St. Luke’s, Shawnee, and St. Francis, Overland Park, have joined the efforts, too, and together they seek to raise awareness of the needs of the pantry among members.

“This really has become a community pantry,” Lehnertz said. “It’s truly a ministry of the Northeast Convocation.”

St. Thomas spent the fall encouraging food donations through a series of “challenges” to its members. Red wagons were designated one month for either the Kansas City Chiefs football team or their rival, the Denver Broncos. Fans “voted” for their favorite team by filling the wagon with food items, many of them in boxes matching the team’s colors.

For three weeks in December, pantry clients who qualified also were able to shop in the Christmas toy store, where donated toys and gifts could be purchased for pennies on the dollar. Convocation parishes helped gather new toys for the effort.

One of 104 grants

The United Thank Offering funded 104 grants in 2007, amounting to $2.4 million. Most of that money comes from offerings made by individuals, often in the traditional UTO “Blue Box.” Money from individuals is collected at the parish level and funneled through dioceses to the UTO office in New York. For 2007 those contributions totaled $2.1 million.

Of the grants made this year, 71 of them went to ministries within the United States. The rest went to needs in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe and the Middle East.

The two largest grants were $79,722 to the Diocese of Sialkot in Pakistan to finish a hospital, and $68,000 to the Diocese of Alaska to build a new church for St. Augustine’s, Homer. The smallest grant of $750 went to the Diocese of Mississippi to start a Sunday School program at St. Mark’s, Jackson.

The United Thank Offering is a program of the Episcopal Church, founded and administered by women since 1889. Its mission is to “expand the circle of thankful people” through offerings, prayers and focus on God’s blessings.