By Al Benson
Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry mobile pantry will hold a drive-thru giveaway of food, school supplies and household products from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 5, at Georgetown Elementary School, 995 Long Grove Drive in Aurora.
The public is invited. Admission is free. Registration is not required.
The mobile pantry will distribute foods including meat, juice and macaroni and cheese mix. Also, toilet paper, laundry detergent and other household items will be offered.
Rebecca “Becky” Dunnigan, pantry community outreach and program director, added that a “school-supply reboot” is planned for Feb. 5. Returning to Georgetown, volunteers will hand out pencils, notebooks, folders and other disposable school supplies. In August at Georgetown, Interfaith distributed 400 backpacks filled with school supplies to a record 401 families with 733 children.
Dunnigan explained, “Since we distributed backpacks of school supplies at this location earlier, we thought it would be nice to go back and refill them.”
Dunnigan announced Interfaith’s fourth monthly Women’s Empowerment Mobile Pantry, a distribution of free food and household items for women only, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17. The location will be announced.
Women are invited. Admission and parking are free. Identification is not required.
In addition to food, diapers, formula, baby food and feminine hygiene products will be distributed. The pantry’s January distribution at Santori Aurora Public Library served 60 families.
According to Dunnigan, women’s pantries are scheduled for the third Thursdays of months during 2022. Locations will be announced.
Interfaith added the women’s-only pantry to its popular drive-thru, mobile pantries, launched in January 2021, with a grant from Aurora Women’s Empowerment Foundation. AWE, an Aurora -based nonprofit, was formed in 2018 after the Aurora YWCA closed after nearly 125 years.
Amy Bauduin, AWE chair, said, “Our mission is to elevate and empower Aurora-area women and future women by making grants to tax-exempt nonprofits engaged in meaningful, measurable work that helps women over the hurdles of inequity and exclusion, propelling them forward with life-changing programs and services.”
Dunnigan added that the pantry’s first 2022 kids’ pop-up mobile distribution will be held from 10 a.m. to noon at Georgetown Elementary School, 995 Long Grove Dr. in Aurora. Dunnigan said, “This will be a school supply reboot. Since we distributed backpacks of school supplies at this location earlier we thought it would be nice to go back and refill.”
With pantry staffers and volunteers, a truck and driver loaned by Calvary Church of Naperville visits area locations to distribute Interfaith food, household items and women’s hygiene products.
Call 630-692-3061, e-mail rdunnigan@aurorafoodpantry.org or visit aurorafoodpantry.org for more information.