It was a Monday afternoon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Patchogue when volunteers started to do inventory, kicking off their third week of welcoming customers into a small food pantry inside its thrift shop.
What started out as a once-a-week grab-and-go food pantry to aid the growing number of food insecure people on Long Island (due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic) now has a new look—a grocery store-style food pantry and soup kitchen manned by volunteers with disabilities.
“Father Reiss (the Priest in Charge) wanted to change it to a food pantry that would be more like a supermarket, a client choice food pantry,” said Jo-Ann Vitale, operations director of RISE Life Services, a nonprofit organization that supports residents with developmental and other disabilities.
A 2023 study by Feeding America showed that nearly a quarter million of Long Islanders are food insecure, including 65,000 children. Long Island Cares reported that 2.7% of Long Islanders face daily food insecurity, but because 40% of the food-insecure Long Island households are above the poverty level, they are ineligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Here in Patchogue, staff and volunteers from RISE Life Services are stepping up to make a difference. In addition to supporting people with disabilities to practice life skills like following directions, interacting with people, counting, and doing things in the kitchen, RISE Life Services is dedicated to its mission of addressing food insecurity in Suffolk County through volunteer work. They now help between 80 to 100 families a week to pick out groceries from donations from Long Island Cares and Island Harvest every Friday and serve them warm meals twice a week in their soup kitchen without requiring any documentation.
“Not everybody is lucky to be able to have a job and to be able to afford to buy the things that they need to take care of their family,” said Vitale. “So, it’s great for the individuals that come to my day program to be able to give back to the community because that’s kind of what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to help each other.”
This is the second food pantry opened by RISE, which also staffs a food pantry in Riverhead that provides food to more than 300 families per week, as well as makes deliveries to nearly 150 additional families and seniors in the Hamptons.
With a smile on her face, Diane Butler, who supervises the food pantry, said she “loves” being inside this “fabulous place.”
“I love seeing all the people coming in and leaving with their groceries,” she added. “I like helping people because it’s an important part of being a member of the community.”
But the experience is even more gratifying for the helpers. Maddie, a RISE volunteer with autism, has been helping families choose items from the kitchen and is responsible for restocking the shelves after each day.
“I think that it’s fulfilling [to] help people,” she said. After a long day of volunteering, Maddie noticed that “jelly was a big one today,” later adding that she’s enjoyed helping so far because it teaches her that “people need help no matter where they’re from.”
The new food pantry and soup kitchen at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is open every Monday and Thursday from 12:00-2:00pm.