A Pantry Director on the Move
Marty is the executive director of Waushara County Food Pantry, one of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin’s pantry partners.
But she calls herself the “working director,” because she’s rarely in her office. More often, you’ll find Marty in the warehouse moving pallets of food, driving trucks, lugging food boxes out to recipients’ cars, and making sure everyone is well-fed and in good spirits.
Marty compares life to the game Jenga, in that we must make careful choices. Some decisions are easy, and others leave us a little unstable. And sometimes when we least expect it, a block from beneath us is taken outside of our control, and the whole thing tumbles down.
“We’re all seconds away from having our lives change completely,” says Marty. One diagnosis, one job loss, or one car accident makes the tower fall. But the next step is to start rebuilding. That’s what food pantries are for,” says Marty.
The Waushara County Food Pantry, located in Wautoma, helps feed rural families who are facing hard times. Marty says the food bank is there to help.
“Part of it’s just about keeping your spirits up,” she says. “Food keeps people’s spirits up. If you’re not eating, you can’t focus on anything else, and it’s hard to make good decisions.”
The pantry offers more than food. They give away personal care kits with items like prenatal vitamins, cough medicine, adult diapers, makeup, or hair dying kits. Something as simple as a new pair of socks may be a glimmer of hope.
The pantry also connects people with services to help them get back on their feet. “We can help them sign up for gas and electric assistance so that they have more money for whatever else they need,” Marty says.
“It comes down to this: making sure that people, with dignity and respect, get the things that let them use their money a different way. Most people have some money coming in, and while it may not be a lot, they can spend it on medications or other types of food that we don’t have.”
Marty’s main concern, however, is that many Waushara County residents live in a vast rural food desert. Low-income families are less likely to have reliable transportation and are more likely to live in communities with smaller convenience stores that have less nutritious options. There are food deserts in urban communities, too, but for rural areas, the distance between some people and healthy food is much farther away.
“Some of these folks have to drive 40 miles to get to their closest grocery store,” Marty says. “So that means they are that far away from our pantry, too.”
To reach these rural families, the food pantry hits the road. At the beginning of the pandemic, they hosted nine mobile pantries per week, and today, they continue to host four mobile pantries per week. Says Marty, “We’ve got to go where they are, if they can’t get to us.”
Thank you for keeping vital food pantries like this one in operation. Another gift today can help keep their shelves well stocked!
