WHEATON – As someone who regularly visits the food pantry at People's Resource Center in Wheaton, Nicole Sciara appreciates the pantry recently received a $25,000 update.
"It's organized," Sciara said. "It's seems more organized, and it's bigger. Seeing that it's bigger, they can have more people shopping at one time."
Sciara has several medical issues that prevent her from working full time.
"I have Crohn's disease, and I also have some other issues where it is really hard for me to hold a job," she said. "I'm a single mother and work part time at home."
The Wheaton pantry serves 2,000 families a month. Ken Madden, the food pantry director at People's Resource Center, said the pantry was revamped in order to provide a better experience for clients, volunteers and staff.
That includes a new and improved layout.
"Before, our clients would come in, they would go to our walk-in freezer and they would go out the door," Madden said. "That didn't work for us because we carry a lot of food from local vendors. And they would be coming in the same direction that the clients were going. There was a lot of bumping up against each other."
With the new layout, clients are given a shopping cart – which is color-coded to reflect the size of their household – and then they go shopping in the new configuration, which is S-shaped. Each area is now labeled so clients can know how many items they can take based on their household's size, Madden said.
"We're recognizing that bigger households may need more food than we were giving out," he said.
As part of the improvements, the pantry's floor also was replaced, and the lighting was improved.
"Not only did we add all LED lights, we also added rows of lighting," Madden said. "Before, it was a lot darker. It was not as comforting."
The food pantry reopened Aug. 13 after being closed for 2 1/2 weeks. Clients were directed to other pantries while it was closed.
During the planning of the project, pantry volunteers were asked about what improvements they would like to see.
"Our volunteers are awesome," Madden said. "We have people that come in five days a week. They're here every day helping out and working with us to help our community members."
Client Linda Ellis also was appreciative of the improvements made to the pantry. She has been coming to the pantry for three or four years.
"I think it moves a little bit faster," she said. "It looks like it's bigger. It's more roomy."
Her granddaughter will sometimes shop with her at the pantry.
"She gets to pick out the things she wants to eat," Ellis said. "She looks forward to coming to the pantry."
Ellis said she also likes People's Resource Center because of all the services it offers to give people the help they need, such as job search assistance.
"There are a lot of resources here in the resource center," she said. "Lots of people don't know about the services, but if you don't ask, you don't know. They try to make everything available to you that's available for you. And if they don't have it here, they can point you in the right direction."
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Know more
Go to peoplesrc.org.