2 Fish 5 Loaves Food Pantry in Monroe gets refrigeration unit, grant money
The 2 Fish 5 Loaves Food Pantry at Monroe's Christ Lutheran Church is one of 37 food pantries in Michigan to receive grant funding from Blue Cross Complete of Michigan and the United Dairy Industry of Michigan.
In all, the organizations are providing $156,000 in grants to food pantries in 20 counties. Each pantry will receive a refrigeration unit, valued at up to $7,000, and $250 to offer more refrigerated foods, including milk, cheese, fruit, vegetables, yogurt and cottage cheese.
The 2 Fish 5 Loaves Food Pantry is at 225 E. Elm St.
“The grant from BCBSM and United Dairy Industry of Michigan will provide us with a dairy cooler unit as well as $250 that will be used to help stock fresh dairy and produce for our pantry. This is going to be another big step forward in our effort to, not only provide food to our clients, but to provide a varied and healthy range of food items for them,” Harold “Rusty” Ward, pantry facilitator, said in an email message.
The 2 Fish 5 Loaves Food Pantry serves about 220 clients a month. Most live in the city of Monroe, but some are from other parts of Monroe County. They include senior citizens and homeless people. The pantry also gets referrals from the Monroe County Opportunity Program. Much of its food comes from MCOP.
"For September we had 217 client visits. We also have served an additional 450 clients through the mobile food distributions we have had. We have a fifth one scheduled for Oct. 28," Ward said.
2 Fish 5 Loaves officially began in 2021.
“Christ Lutheran has always had a ‘food closet’ over the years with small amounts of food available," Ward said. "In 2021 we made the decision to ramp up our effort to meet the food insecurity needs of our community by expanding the scale and activity of that food closet, giving it the name of 2 Fish 5 Loaves, creating stock space in our building, setting up our partnership with MCOP and developing a volunteer structure to manage the effort. We literally, over the last two-plus years, have gone from an occasional client to the 200-plus clients we serve a month now. Additionally, over the last two years we have done four successful mobile food distributions in partnership with MCOP, Gleaners, First Presbyterian and Good Shepherd Lutheran."
The pantry is staffed by volunteers.
“Our pantry has a core group of 10 volunteers who facilitate the staffing of the pantry, obtain food from our various food sources, stock the pantry, promote the pantry and do other activities that make our pantry function," Ward said.
Subscribe Now: For all the latest local developments, breaking news and high school sports content.
2 Fish 5 Loaves is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.
To learn more or to request food, call the church at 734-241-4554 or visit christmonroe.com.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: 2 Fish 5 Loaves Food Pantry gets refrigeration unit, grant money
