Though it may look quiet.

It's another busy day at the Wilkinsburg Community Ministries food pantry.

There are shipments to load produced to weigh, and customers to serve.

Adam, where do you want these?

You can just stick them in the right... - Um Ruth Kittner.

I'm the executive director at Wilkinsburg Community Ministry.

I've been here since 2016 as the executive director, and I do all the fundraising, and I've been involved since 1999 through my mother, who was a volunteer here.

It started in 1966 with a group of men involved in the Westinghouse Men's Choir said, okay, Wilkinsburgs in dire shape.

They talked to some of their pastors and they got 12 congregations together and started Wilkinsburg Community Ministry to try to bring Wilkinsburg into the Great Society.

That President Johnson was talking.

When we realized that food was the fundamental issue and it wasn't just feeding children at organized events.

It was feeding children, feeding moms, feeding dads, feeding grandmas, period.

Grandpas everybody.

And by the end of 2019, we were focused solely on food.

Just in time for the pandemic.

So by then we had reorganized the pantry.

We were distributing food every business day of the week.

So we started working with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and with grocery stores to acquire more food.

Well, in a month we can serve between 4500 and 5000.

Along with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Bank, the Wilkinsburg Community Ministry works with a long list of local food donors.

Whole Foods, Aldi, Trader Joe's, Panera, and several bakeries and small shops.

Yeah, there was a lot of food brought in today, but Tuesday we get 40,000 pounds and every day we have food coming in, every day we've got maybe a delivery from 412 Food Rescue.

They pick up our Whole Foods delivery, they pick up our Trader Joes delivery.

We also pick up from Costco on the weekends.

Prefer the cold or pantry?

Cold.

People we serve are grateful that we're here.

They're happy we're here.

They're always willing to pitch in when we have a project going.

You'd be surprised at the number of people who will come and help us, like when we put the garden in the back.

We've got this lovely little garden that it doesn't grow enough that we can, you know, substitute for whole food produce.

But it's a sanctuary for birds.

It's got butterflies.

It's something pretty instead of a vacant lot.

Getting food in from the cars or the trucks.

Let me help.

And they carry it in.

So are they single folks?

Seniors?

Families?

Yes.

Single folks.

Youth.

A lot of youth aging out of the foster care.

A lot of kids like that.

We get a lot of veterans, probably 30% of our households have a veteran.

And we've got seniors as we've got two senior high rises down the street on either side.

Most of our families are working.

They may not have a job that gives them a monthly paycheck.

A lot of them are working gigs.

This is people in power saying, oh, they can work.

Why don't they work?

Well, they are working, but the job they have or the job they can get doesn't pay benefits.

It doesn't pay a living wage.

And it's not consistent.

And the Wilkinsburg Community Ministry lives by its motto, “We share food.” In this way, its neighbors and we share food with our neighbors.

They take what they need, leave what they won't use, and help their other neighbors.

So by sharing food, we emphasize the communal process of food security.

Food security is all about community.

It's all about neighbors helping neighbors.

We hire locally.

Most of our family of volunteers and staff come to us from 2 or 3 blocks away at the most.

What is that?

Flourless bread in there, or you want some regular bread?

Okay.

One of those people from the neighborhood is Robin Jackson.

Robin grew up in Wilkinsburg and enjoys helping her neighbors.

Yes, I just helped the clients when they come in.

Or the customers we call them because that's what they are.

And yeah, I just guide them around and chit chat because it's neighborhood.

Helping people's fun, you know.

So and my mom worked here in the 90s and she said it was so much fun.

And it is, you know, helping is just fun.

You're giving people food.

We're talking about recipes, talking about the neighborhood stuff, you know?

So it's all good.

What do you love about your job?

When I come in the morning, sometimes there's already people in line and I come.

And I said, Adam, I feel like a superstar.

They're like, Miss Robin.

Yeah.

It's fun.

Yeah, it's really fun helping people.

We have people who speak Arabic, French, Spanish.

There's a couple Russian, Turkish.

So you're getting people from everywhere.

And everybody's usually so kind and excited to find out about the place.

Talk to Adam and he get you in.

He's he speaks Spanish.

And then we have our translators on our phones.

We open at nine and we close at 2.

Tuesdays or evening hours from 3 to 7.

And so, yeah, 85, 90 people a day.

Before the customers have a chance to shop, someone has to make sure the food gets from the donors to the people who need it.

That's where Adam comes in.

My name is Adam Morgan.

I'm the operations manager here at Wilkinsburg Community Ministry.

Since we've walked in the door, you have been busy.

Like making sure your food gets from out there to in here.

Tell me about what it is that you do with the food.

So when we started the morning, we.

We get the shelves loaded with what we have.

And on Fridays in particular, we get a lot of donations in from local grocery stores.

So when we unload those, we bring them in, get them weighed, get them sorted, and then we get them out on the shelves for people to shop for.

We get most of our dry goods, meat and dairy from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

We're part of their network, and we probably get 75-80% of our food from them.

So we definitely cant serve as many people as we do without their support and their partnership, but also the donations that we get in every week from local organizations, stores.

We try to keep stocked up with as much variety as possible.

We have clients with different dietary needs, different cultural and religious considerations.

Anyone that's vegetarian or vegan, we try to keep as much option stocked for them.

The other people in that community, they're your friends.

They're your neighbors, they're your family.

And when you are dealing with friends, familys and neighbors, that just makes it a little bit easier for everyone.

Makes the whole experience here more comfortable and more safe for the people that are coming to shop.

And we're lucky to be able to do this because of the funding that we get and that we raise.

We also have a mobile pantry that goes out Tuesday through Saturday, typically in the afternoon or evening hours, to try to catch people that are working during the day and can't make it to this food pantry when we're open.

We followed Marcus, who manages the mobile food pantry, to one of his stops at the Edgewood Presbyterian Church and spoke to Reverend Jason Dauer.

So this church has been involved with Wilkinsburg Community Ministry for decades.

We've had a rich relationship with them and have gotten more involved over the last few years as they've sent their mobile food truck out into neighborhoods.

So about two years ago, we connected with Ruth Kittner and asked if we could be one of their mobile food pantry sites, and she said yes.

And so we've been experimented with what that looks like here in Edgewood.

I'm pretty much a little bit of everything I do building maintenance.

I do the food truck, I do pickups for deliveries.

Yeah, so there's thousands of pounds of food I lift every day.

This selection is amazing.

Like, I'm looking at these yams.

They're gorgeous.

The tomatoes are gorgeous.

It's not just shelf stable things.

They have fresh meat, fresh produce.

So nice.

They even have, like, toilet paper and paper towels for our neighbors and us.

Anyone is welcome to come and get supplies from that truck.

I like their fresh produce.

My kids love apples and everything, so it's very helpful because the produce can be very expensive.

When this is available, it's such a blessing.

In order to answer the growing need for services.

The crew with the Wood Street Food Pantry will soon be moving to a larger facility.

The new facility is at 813 South Avenue and we bought it last May.

A year ago in May.

It will allow us to put all of our operation on one floor.

Right now we have refrigerators here.

We have them in the garage, we have them in a storeroom, and we have an outside refrigerator.

Our neighbors, when they come for food, have to walk through, have to wait outside in all weather and then walk through and you know, basically wait for someone else.

This will allow people to wait inside.

It will put all of our food in one location, so that we can better assess what we have and what we need, and it will provide safer places to unload the food off street.

We get to see kids grow up over the years, and it does more than just provide food.

It provides a sense of community and knowing your neighbors.

What do you love most about your job?

I love meeting the people.

I love knowing that I'm doing something good for my neighbors, and I love helping people give money to a cause they believe in because they want to do it.

That's why community is right there in our name, Wilkinsburg Community Ministry.

We are about serving our community.

We're about being a part of our community.