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Project Timeline​
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The first pantry was made of wood, and was designed by my husband Henry Gutman who founded ecomodern design studio. The Totem cabinet was version 1.0 and it was a success! People loved the pantry right away and used it. It was designed to be indoors and after 6 months outside, the wood started to separate from the base and we had to find a different design solution. We switched to a metal cabinet that had deep shelves and a ton of space. It stood 7 feet high and we installed it and that was the pantry for the next 2 and half years.
We will always see doing a free DIY food pantry it as a practical way to share food, and to rescue food that will go to waste. It's a way to share the harvest from local fruit trees in the area. Our neighbors bring apples, pears, persimmons, plums, lemons, figs and guavas when they are in season. Everything grows in Berkeley!! And when you have an abundance of fruit, why not share it so it doesn't go bad? Makes total sense. But yes, as you have read there are problems.
One of the big take aways from doing this is that it really is about design and presentation. That is what interested us. We wanted to create a beautiful way to share food. If you create a clean, well designed space for the food, people will trust it, and take it home. If it is just a dirty cardboard box on the ground, no one will take it. So the way we did it actually worked well.
Putting food on a shelf radically changes how people perceive the value and edibility of that food. And it does not matter that our food shelves are outside. We have created a clean, reliable space for food and 300 people use it every week.
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November/Dec 2020
Thanksgiving and Christmas
We organized two food drives in our West Berkeley (Westbrae) neighborhood. All of our neighbors donated food! It was a way to introduce the project with a flier and an empty gift bag to be filled with shelf stable food. The response was fabulous! We knew that our neighbors were on board with this.
Nov 2020 - May 2021
Bi-monthly grocery trips to get food for the pantry. Supporters from next door have donated to help us keep it stocked, along with the food donations from our immediate neighbors who are supportive of the food pantry.
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Feb 2021
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We installed a Gratitude Message Board on the side of the food pantry for people to leave messages and express themselves and their needs. It works well, until one night someone had a melt down and tore down all the nice messages and threw them on the ground. This is just part of the deal. It's in a public space, so anything can happen.
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We announce when we would be getting bread and pastry donations from The Cheese Board and when we would put out the food so people could come get it when it was as fresh as possible.
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May 2021
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An article in Berkeleyside is published that tells the story of our food pantry.
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May 2021
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We began doing a weekly pickup at ACME Bakery on San Pablo in Berkeley. ACME donates 4 huge bags of bread which we re-package in bread bags to keep the bread clean and safe.
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August 2022​
We upgraded our signage that faces the street (new wood, new vinyl stickers) and the roof over the pantry, so that rain does not get into the shelving and soak the food.
February 2023
During a particularly violent rainstorm, our signage that faces the street was damaged. We plan to repair it because many people drop off food donations by car. There are always a few open parking spots right in front of it.
June 2023
Changed the name to Little Free Food Pantry Berkeley. Bought domain name and printed cards to give to people in the park, with a map so they can find it. More food donations are coming in, in a steady way.
Sept 2023
Painted the metal pantry! It needed a makeover after being outside for two and a half years. It looks really great! We are so grateful to Angel and his business partner for donating their time, labor and they even insisted on paying for the paint. They cleaned up the hedge that is behind the pantry and the strip of land that it's on.
We closed it a month later because there were a few dramatic incidents of vandalism that required a lot of cleanup. Someone took all the food in the pantry and threw it on the ground. I will never forget that day. There was a bag of flour and spices and tea all over the sidewalk, that sort of thing. I took a photo. I knew that was the tipping point.
After putting so much love into it, I could not handle it anymore. It felt demoralizing and it would depress me because I would lose hope for humanity. I know it was someone who was having a mental health breakdown, but still. This is what happens. Burnout. That is why it's important to do a project like this with a group of people who can make a time commitment and everyone has an equal share in how it's run, and in the problem solving process.
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