October 24, 2014 at 4:08 p.m.
Rhinelander Area Food Pantry celebrates opening of new location
Rhinelander Area Food Pantry celebrates opening of new location
By Kayla Thomason-
The new location is more spacious and boasts a larger food washing area. It also has a waiting room, a floor scale and a better layout of items.
Kiwanis is building a greenhouse so the pantry can provide more fresh produce for customers.
"I love [the new facility], our customers love it, all the people that are working think it's working well," said Jane Motowski, general manager of the Rhinelander Area Food Pantry.
The food is color-coordinated so families know how much they can take of a particular item based on the number of people in their home.
"If it's in a group by itself like cereal, cold cereal, there's a sticker for one through three in families, one for four to six and one for seven or more and inside that circle it tells them how many they get," Motowski said.
Yellow is for one to three family members, light orange is four to six and dark orange is for seven or more.
The new facility is on one floor, making it far easier for the volunteers to move large quantities of food around. They all love that they are on one floor and have a lot of storage space, according to Motowski.
"So far everyone's liking [the new location]," she said.
Jennifer Engel, community programs specialist with USDA Rural Development, underwrote a grant and helped facilitate the purchasing of the equipment. She also coordinated the paperwork and dispersed funds to RAFP. She saw the previous location and how tight the space was there.
"This is a much improvement from what [RAFP] had, the one room they had before," Engel said. "It's a beautiful building now and they have been just wonderful to work with, everyone has just been so cooperative and it's good to see their gratitude for this."
With the new facility volunteers at RAFP are discovering how much trash they create and have taken steps to keep it out of landfills.
"Now that we have this facility we're noticing how much garbage we generate," said Guy Hansen, executive director of the Rhinelander Area Food Pantry. "We went to talk to [Walmart] and they will take every bit of our recycleable clean plastic."
The move to the new facility was made possible through community donations and grants RAFP received.
Wisconsin Public Service gave a $10,000 grant for the 5-inch insulation in the new roof.
The Department of Agriculture Community Programs grant paid for more than half - $26,000 - of the price for equipment such as a forklift and two floor scales.
The new equipment allows the volunteers to handle the food less. In addition, shopping carts don't have a front so boxes can be slid into and out of the carts making the process even easier on volunteers and customers.
"We were really pleased with your application and the fact that you got this funding and we know it will make a difference to you, although the real difference is made by your board, your volunteers and Guy Hansen) and people like him who are engaged in making this project work," Stan Gruszynski, state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development programs in Wisconsin, said. "You deserve a lot of credit for the effort that you put into this, your ability to reach out whether it was the business community for support or volunteer help that you had to make this happen."
Those at the USDA were happy to lend a hand to this important organization.
"We're very pleased to be able to be a part of this through the USDA Rural Development Community Programs grant," Gruszynski said. "We know that it's not easy for these rural communities to raise the resources they need. Rhinelander's not a large community but we think it's a critical program in this part of the state."
He commended those involved with the RAFP for all of their hard work and effort they put into the new facility. He noted how nice the new location is and how Rhinelander is a community that cares about all of its citizens.
"I'm just amazed at the community [for] having such a wonderful facility available for the residents and it's really good to see, it's such a good cause," Engel said.
The hours for the RAFP will stay the same as at the old location. Food distribution on Mondays is from 3 to 6 p.m., Wednesdays distribution is from 4 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays it's 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Donation drop-off hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Since the new facility they have had 12 new people sign up.
"I think part of it is they have room to move now, it's not like they are little sardines," Motowski said.
She and Hansen want to say a big "thank you" to all 400 volunteers who helped get the new facility ready and for all the donations the panrty has received.
"Congratulations, we're happy to be a part of this and best wishes for continued success in the future," Gruszynski said.
Kayla Breese may be reached at [email protected].
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