Meeting with Gethsemane Baptist Ch. Food Pantry

Meeting with Frank Rogers—Gethsemane Baptist Church Food Pantry
May 10, 2010
9-10:30
(540)230-1460
FBROGERS@msn.com

The Gethsemane Baptist Church seems to be very concerned about building community and relationships. Right now they serve about 100 families a month equaling about 300 individuals. They do home deliveries to 78 of their clients. They are located in Radford but have started to widen their service area to Dublin and Pulaski. Because they are a USDA pantry they only distribute on the 3rd Saturday of every month, but will give to anyone who comes to the door. They deliver intermittently throughout the month.

Needs
• It was not clear how often they use volunteers. Though he says there are enough he would like some that are more regular.
• He would like to see more classes offered to his clients.
• The pantry has just purchased a laptop and has a pretty good system for keeping his clientele but would like to have help tying it into the churches system and a few other IT support issues. He is ready for this at any point.
Resources to give
• They are able to offer a significant amount of transportation. They have several vans and a bus.
• They have a 12ft. and a 16ft. trailer that they could use to help transport food.

Feelings on Second Harvest “Mobile Pantry”
He likes the idea of mass distribution and would like to see it happen. The idea of self distribution as opposed to all the pantries distributing at one place worked better for him. He said he would be willing to help shuttle some of the food for pantries who could not get the food from the drop point. He was flexible on times, dates and location. He also had enough volunteers to make it happen. The only problem he saw was if Second Harvest wants to give out a significant amount of freezer goods then this would not work so well for him. However, he liked the idea of having a place where he could pick up the freezer goods.