This will be a long blog post but with lots of photos, so grab yourself a cup or glass of your favourite beverage and follow along as I tell you the story of my little neighbourhood pantry: how it started and where it is now and everything in between.
I didn’t wake up one morning thinking “Hm, I will start a food bank.” it “just” developed over time and I am very happy that it did.
How I ended up here
I moved to Santiago de Compostela in May 2017, so yes, the 8th anniversary of that move is later this month.
The first year, I offered an open house for pilgrims and the second and third I was the volunteer lay coordinator for the Anglican Camino chaplaincy of the Church of England. Quite a mouthful, I know.
In autumn 2019 I was looking for a “winter place” for me for six months and moved to a different part of Santiago with the idea of finding the following year a bigger flat for me and that years’ chaplaincy volunteers. That following year was 2020, enough said. So, I am still living in the same house 4+ years later, first on the first floor and now on the third.
The house
This house has always been perceived a bit as a “religious house” in the neighbourhood. The late uncle of my landlord was a Roman-Catholic priest that used to live on the second floor and the FCJ (Faithful Companions of Jesus) sisters, also known as Camino Compagnons and their volunteers are living on the first floor from April to October.
The neighbourhood
Mine is a very mixed neighbourhood, income, ethnicity, colour and sexual orientation, diversity – you name them, they live here. Well, perhaps, not the super rich, but otherwise a lovely, mixed neighbourhood and yes, whilst we don’t have the super rich, we certainly have the very poor living among us. Even before the pandemic hit, I noticed a few men regularly dumpster diving for useful things near my place and others begging in the streets of my neighbourhood and nearby. I quickly realized that they and their very extended family live just a few houses down from me in the same street.
The start
When the pandemic hit in early 2020 it became quickly clear that a) there wouldn’t be any Camino chaplaincy here in Santiago and b) that the FCJ Camino Companions wouldn’t come to take care of pilgrims in 2020. So I stayed on in their first floor flat (the one with the balcony) in the same house where I still live for the time being.
There was a lot of stuff in the house, like a very large number of tea bags, spices, cosmetics etc. that wouldn’t last until the uncertain return of normality and travel, so with permission from the FCJ sisters, I packed it all up and put it before the house with a “Open the box and take what you need but please leave the box itself. Thank you, a neighbour” sign. See >Kindness Box< for more info and please excuse the poor photo quality as it was already dark when I put the box out.
Similar, as the year progressed, I also got permission from the two people involved with the practical set-up of my original place, to give away what wasn’t needed at the moment for the chaplaincy, like blankets, dishes, bed and kitchen linen, pots and plates etc. It didn’t made sense to me to keep these things in storage when there were plenty of people around that needed them!
During our lock down, one of the strictest in Europe, I noticed that the Red Cross and Civil Protection delivered food supplies to my neighbours down the street. This stopped as the lock down was slowly lifted. I don’t remember exactly when the first knock at the door for food occurred, but it has been some when in May , meaning this blog post also celebrates the 5th anniversary of my pantry!
From boxes to shelves
In the beginning I just put a few extra items like pasta, milk, eggs, female hygiene products, masks, hand sanitizer etc. in my own shopping basket but by October 2020 the demand had become so high that I switched over to having groceries delivered to the house. I don’t have a car and carrying 12-18l milk, 10-15kg potatoes, several kg pasta etc. from the supermarket each week to the house. Nops 😉
First I stored the groceries set aside for the neighbours on a chest of drawers in the hallway of my flat, then on shelves in the same hallway and then in a room I had freed up for that purpose. As you can see from the photos below, I had also started to taking in donations in form of clothing, shoes, and other useful items. I nicknamed that room my “round-about room” as nothing stayed very long in it and it also refilled rather quickly.
Distribution was pretty labour intensive at that time as we still had to be extremely careful because of Covid. So, I stored the groceries in my flat, the neighbours rang the bell, we chatted balcony to street and back about what was needed, I would fill a box with those things, walk down the stairs, set it down in the house entrance and open the door. My neighbours then would come in and take what they needed from the box, all with staircase window and door open (ventilation), everybody fully masked and social distancing. Covid times. Here a few photos of typical boxes for my neighbours, the content differed from week to week a bit according to needs.
After they had left, I would take the empty box upstairs for disinfection and re-filling. That was pretty much the system all through 2020 and 2021.
From flat to house entrance
By 2022 things had stabilised, Covid numbers were down, vaccination and booster numbers were up, restrictions for travel and gatherings were lifted – live returned to normal. And so the FCJ Camino Compagnons also returned to Santiago and to their flat in which I had lived the last three years or so. Thankfully there was another empty flat in the house and I only had to move up to the third floor! And to my big relief my landlord allowed me to put up the pantry shelves in the house vestibule, sparing me so having to carry groceries up and down three floors in boxes!
Because all things that are available, are now visible when the neighbours come, there was also a subtle change in the distribution dynamics. On one hand, my neighbours see now exactly how much or how little is available, on the other hand they can now choose freely what and how much they need. I must say, I like that much better than the previous version 😉 Here a few typical photos from different weeks of how the pantry looks now.
Over time, my neighbours also organized themselves so that they all come together one time a week on average, sparing me trotting down and up again too many times.
Numbers and accountability
It is difficult to state exactly how many people my little pantry helps, but the large core family is about 16-20 people strong, depending who is in town. And these people also share what they receive with other members of their extended family, so my best guess is that around 20+ people are now helped with the pantry.
For a while I kept meticulous records and published regularly numbers about donations received and groceries bought but after a while I realised that nobody was really interested in that kind of number crunching. Plus in May 2023 I contracted Covid, followed by Long Covid which left me with a lot of fatigue and brain fog. So now I do the following:
- I photograph the pantry after each restocking.
- I add up the receipts necessary for that.
- I publish the photo(s) and cost both on Facebook and on the current fundraiser.
- Rinse and repeat each week.
- If anybody wants more information, just leave your query in a comment!
Pantry visitors
Since the pantry is in the house entrance I have been lucky enough to welcome many visitors to it. Here a few photos, some bring curiosity, some bring donations but all bring a smile. Sometimes the visit coincides with re-stocking, then the visitor(s) have fun helping me to fill the shelves and nearly always we go for a chat and coffee afterwards. All people in these photos have agreed to having their photo taken and published.
Current State of the Pantry and other little things I do
I restock the shelves on average one time a week.
I collect and/or receive in kind donations like clothing, toys, shoes etc. for the pantry locally here in Santiago.
Me and my neighbours use WhatsApp to find out the best time for the pick up, mostly towards the end of the week.
That is the typical weekly cycle.
I also receive, as a donation, a box full of freah fruit and vegetables from a local NGO called Apotheca and grow plants for my neighbourhood.
How you can help me to help others
There are obviously donation buttons you can use at the top of this page but there are many other ways you can help to keep this little neighbour pantry going:
If you are in Santiago, come and visit. Depending on the day of the week you might see full or empty shelves, but I am always happy to show it to you, go for a coffee with you and chat about my neighbours. Please contact me first, WhatsApp text is best, to make sure that I am at home! And if you want to bring something for the shelves, please check with me first so you know what is needed!
Order online, pay for it but have it delivered to me and no, I don’t mean Amazon! There are several supermarkets that deliver groceries here. If you prefer to help that way, contact me first, again WhatsApp text is best, and I give you the website options, the pantry wish list and the delivery info.
You can share my 2025 GoFundMe Fundraiser, with family and friends on and off social media. If you have previously visited the pantry in person, it would be great if you mention that too!
If you have any other idea on how you might be able to help, just leave them in a comment.
And last, but certainly not least:
What you can do at home
Like I wrote at the beginning, it all started small and grew over time, so – start small! I hope to write a long blog post about this whole topic soon, but here one idea to get you started:
Look up your closest Little Free Pantry here: https://mapping.littlefreepantry.org/ and contact its steward and ask what kind of help is needed.
Because of Covid I had to find out alone what works and what doesn’t, you don’t have to do that. Ask others in your own community that are already involved what they are doing, what needs doing and how you can help!
I think that covers a lot of info about the pantry. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in a comment!
