It takes courage to walk across the threshold of the Island Food Pantry. Whether it’s food for a day, or longer, it’s hard to admit need and even braver to act upon it – especially in such a small community where everyone knows everyone. The Food Pantry is one of those places where neighbors truly meet – those who have and those who don’t. As one former Food Pantry client who is now a loyal volunteer says, “You never know when it could be you walking through that door, so always be gracious when you are on the other side. We all could be here someday.”

When I first started as an Island Food Pantry volunteer a few years ago, it felt good doing community service in something that I care deeply about: food. The commitment was only two hours every Wednesday afternoon. The other volunteers, mostly retirees, were nice and made me, the young kid, feel welcome. My job was, and still is, to help clients check in, hand out bags of pre-packed groceries, fill bags as needed, and sort food donations. Sometimes the other Wednesday shift workers, Bill Bennett or Marcia Randol, both of Chilmark, carry a client’s bags out to the car or make goo-goo faces to a fussy baby while the mother-client gets her family’s food. Like I said, simple enough work and it feels good.

But the first time someone I knew walked through the door, the la-di-da do-gooder in me got a kick in the reality check. The client was a parent from my sons’ school and when our eyes first met, the moment was heavy with what now. Were we going to act as if we didn’t know each other and look away? Did she feel shame, embarrassment, humbled, found out? What did I feel? “Like an entitled dilettante housewife who hands out food to the poor and gets off on it” was the scrawl running across my brain like the news ticker under talking heads on CNN. My knees wobbled. I questioned my own motives: Was I there to help or because I sincerely cared? Because there is a difference.

Our polite social playing field of “everything’s fine” had just been tipped upside down, and it nearly spun out. Except, it didn’t. We looked at each other with an awkward, albeit genuine, smile and went about the business at hand. She got her food, and we chatted about the class field trip, the upcoming winter vacation. And then we parted with a “see you at school.” I was humbled. She was the courageous one. Even though the mere act of going into the Food Pantry concedes need, she sought the help. That’s hard. But that’s just it about this organization: It’s always been a place where people are welcomed and cherished. The moment was momentarily and absolutely uncomfortable – yet respectful. Over these years of volunteering, I’ve learned many things about dignity in community, and I attribute that to the philosophy of the Pantry and the quiet leadership of Armen Hanjian, the current coordinator.
A composed man who says much in only a few words, Armen really does want people to understand that there’s a hunger problem on Martha’s Vineyard. He wants you to realize that it creeps in every day here, under the radar, undermining your neighbors: the elderly, the housebound, veterans, single parents, people between seasonal jobs and seasonal housing, the newest of immigrants, and others just struggling to get by. Moreover, Armen wants you to consider hunger as the root cause of greater societal ills and how it unravels the very fabric of a community and of a society at peace.

“Only when basic food, health, and shelter is attended to, then everything else can be negotiated,” he urges with calm resolve.

According to Armen, there are two types of hunger. There’s the dire: “If I don’t get food I’ll die” hunger. In his years, he’s only seen that once on the Vineyard. Then there’s the kind of hunger that’s insidious. Hidden. It whittles away at a person’s pride and eventually their humanity. “We all have many plates spinning in the air at once,” says Armen. Work, rent, utilities, medical insurance – and putting food on the table “is one of them. If you don’t have food, or enough of it, everything else suffers.”

Armen’s philosophy starts locally and extends globally. “Everyone has a right to food, because there is enough of it to go around. If we [America] sent food abroad [to feed as many as possible] we wouldn’t be so afraid of countries bombing us.” He advocates, “Work backward towards a peaceable kingdom. The more you help your neighbor, you help yourself too.”

Yet this retired United Methodist minister, seventy years of age with blue eyes that sparkle-dance with life and compassion, would never be confrontational, flashy, or the doctrinaire. The Island Food Pantry, under his guidance for the last eleven years, is probably the most humble nonprofit you’ll find on the Vineyard. It holds no fancy cocktail parties or slick $1,000-a-plate-dinner fundraisers. Its modus operandi is dignified consistency with an underlying determination to help combat this Island’s persistent hunger issue.

The two biggest problems facing the Island Food Pantry and fighting hunger here have to do with perception. One: that hunger doesn’t exist on Martha’s Vineyard, and two: that people (translate “Brazilians”) take advantage.

Helen Oliver agrees. Formerly of Chappaquiddick and now residing with her husband Lee in New Hampshire, Helen founded the Food Pantry – then called the Food Cupboard – in 1981. Though Helen credits organizations like Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and the Island Affordable Housing Fund for heightening awareness among the summer people as to the needs of the year-round population, she remains indignant. “It’s never been acceptable to me that in a democratic society as wealthy as we are, people go hungry. It shouldn’t be tolerated. Not in this Island community that is supposed to be caring. It’s just not right.” As far as people taking advantage, she concedes that there may always be some who do, but “there are an awful lot of desperate people who need help,” she says. The mortification in her voice is palpable even over the phone when she speaks about how we’ve become a society that seems to accept hunger.

The Island Food Pantry operates under a few guidelines. Anyone can go in and receive food one time. It’s open from mid-October (even though the sign on the door says November) to mid-April on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons and for emergencies at other times. In order to become a regular client, two criteria must be submitted: personal identification such as a driver’s license or a passport, and a letter of reference on letterhead from a clergyman, a social agency like the Vineyard Health Care Access Program or Community Services, or an employer stating that this person or family needs assistance. Then you get a $20 Stop and Shop gift card once a month and you can pick up three bags of groceries every two weeks. The mission of the Island Food Pantry is to address “emergency need only.” It is not about providing all the food someone or a family needs all the time. It is, and always has been, about serving the Island-wide community.

Client Annie Smith, who is from Liberia and lives in Vineyard Haven, says, “I’d seen my neighbors in Woodside Village bring home food and sometimes they’d share it. Then one day they said, ‘Come on, get in the car. We’re taking you to the Food Pantry.’ That’s how I got here.” She shares that it’s good to know that the Pantry is there when she needs it, though getting there and back home loaded down with groceries isn’t always easy unless she can get a ride.

When a client comes to the Pantry, they receive two bags pre-packed with food the Pantry has purchased (dry goods like pasta, tuna fish, peanut butter, soup, rice, beans, cereal, canned fruit, and fresh produce – bananas, oranges, apples, carrots, and onions). A third bag is filled when the client goes “shopping” at a table full of miscellaneous goods that have been donated. Things like coffee, tea, sugar, bread from a bakery, cookies, shampoo, diapers, feminine hygiene products. Sometimes a hunter will donate cut and parceled venison, a restaurant will drop off vegetables, a farmer will donate overages like broccoli or kale. Specialty items like smoked oysters, olive tapenade, pomegranate molasses, green curry, and chestnut purée are considered treats by some, while others want basics such as mac and cheese, beef stew, green beans. And if there’s something in the bags that a client knows they don’t like, they’re allergic to, or won’t eat, they’ll pull it out and give it back for someone else to use.

Volunteers have to sort through all the food donations. Expiration dates are checked and those with past dates are tossed out. Half-empty or opened anything are all thrown out or fed to volunteer Lynn Weber’s chickens in West Tisbury. She’s a stalwart on Friday afternoons; she speaks Portuguese and helps translate the Food Pantry documents. Marcia Randol organizes the shelves like no one else and looks as pretty and benign as Mary Tyler Moore doing it – until she comes across some item that she can’t believe was donated: moth-ridden pancake mix, for example.

“It’s embarrassing. People clean out their cupboards and think they’re donating food to the hungry,” she says. “If they wouldn’t eat it, why should anyone else?”

Under Armen’s leadership, the Food Pantry has never taken money from the government to buy the food that the forty-plus volunteers store, bag, and distribute. The Pantry is not a church-affiliated program, though it is run out of the Christ United Methodist Church, a.k.a. the Stone Church in Vineyard Haven. The Pantry survives because of a variety of sources of food and money, including the purple drop-off boxes that dot the entryways of Island grocery stores and the recycled mayonnaise jars, with a coin slot cut through the lid, that rest upon the counters of Island businesses. Private donations, funds from the Vineyard Committee on Hunger, memorial funds, and bequests also help pay the bills. Most of the Pantry’s money is spent on food. The rest is paid to the church for utilities and phone, and spent on Stop and Shop cards and office supplies. There is no paid staff.

Yearly food drives are held at the Oak Bluffs School, the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School, churches, and the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. This past spring, the FARM Institute campers in Katama planted potatoes for the Pantry. Bayes Norton Farm in Oak Bluffs donates squash when the harvest comes in. And when civic-minded Herb Foster of Edgartown celebrated his last birthday, his friends brought food donations instead of gifts.

From October of 2006 to the spring of 2007, the Pantry helped three hundred and fifty families (a family in Food Pantry parlance equals one to four people). In years past, it has helped as many as six hundred families. It’s difficult to pinpoint the what and why of how many families participate when. Armen interprets the decline in numbers in part to the Brazilians who arrived here a few years ago, who’ve since acclimated.

“It’s not surprising that Brazilians come to the Food Pantry when they first arrive – they’re the new immigrants getting a foothold,” he says. “Once they’re settled, they stop coming.”

The Island Food Pantry’s most difficult task may not actually be combating hunger. It’s dismantling the illusion of what Martha’s Vineyard is. There’s a direct correlation between empty cupboards and the misconception that hunger doesn’t exist here. Even though food and money come in with the holidays and food drives, it’s not consistent. But hunger is. There have been times when people come in and there’s not enough food. That void reveals a tacit division.

Hunger can be nearly invisible, yet devastating to both the individual spirit and the community. It doesn’t just happen off-Island. Perhaps if that is better understood, the Island Food Pantry’s cupboards will be full and the community, whole.

The Island Food Pantry is open from mid-October to mid-April, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Christ United Methodist Church, 89 William Street, Vineyard Haven. The mailing address is P.O. Box 1874, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568; the telephone number, 508-693-4764. The Food Pantry also has a website: www.islandfoodpantry.org.