Where is the Mobile Pantry Located?
The Portage County Mobile Pantry, 817 Whiting Avenue, Stevens Point, Wisconsin 54481,
is a non-profit, tax exempt, organization that seeks to ensure that rural residents of Portage
County have their food assistance needs met.
Where can referrals and volunteers be directed?
The Portage County Mobile Pantry coordinator is Marcy
Ferriter, 440 Old Wausau Road, Stevens Point, Wisconsin (54481); telephone number
(715) 341-9922.
What is the Purpose fo the Mobile Pantry?
The Portage County Mobile Pantry seeks to ensure that rural residents of Portage
County have access to food assistance when needed. We have developed a special bond
with this community. We hope to enrich their live. The rural people that Mobile Pantry
helps with are low income, have no money for gas, do not have transportation or unreliable
transportation, and do not have available means to come into the local food pantries. The
people of Portage County that we deliver to are elderly, who may have a medical condition,
be disabled, no transportation, no money for gas and do not have families to rely on. We
help families that are low income, perhaps are dealing with job loss, disabilities, and poor
health. At this point we are able to make a delivery once a month.
What is the Experience of the Mobile Pantry?
The Portage County Mobile Pantry is a non-profit community outreach program
that consists of a coordinator, Marcy Ferriter, and eight volunteers, and, as stated above, is
located in the basement of the Portage County Health and Human Services building. The
coordinator can be found sorting, checking dates and shelving food as items are delivered.
The second and fourth Thursday of each month, Ms. Ferriter, and the volunteers package
grocery and sort through day old produce that is donated by a local grocery store. The
Mobile Pantry has been in existence since 2000. In the first year, The Portage County
Mobile Pantry provided food for 30-40 households per month -- those numbers have now
grown to 60 households per month. We help as many as 179 people per month. We are
careful not to duplicate existing efforts, but rather to reach those who are in need.
In our ten years we have made delivers of emergency food more than 4,800 times. Mobile
Pantry supplies supplemental food to rural people who qualify. Rural households in need
are referred by case workers at the Portage County Health and Human Services and
Community Care of Central Wisconsin. The recipients of the Mobile Pantry in Portage
County we deliver to are typically elderly and low income, who may have a medical
condition, be disabled, and do not have extended families to rely on. We deliver to the
outlying areas of Portage County. These recipients may have no means of transportation
and no money for gas or unreliable transportation.
Does Mobile Pantry have any goals for 2011?
The Name of Mobile Pantry’s 2011 project is “Adding Nutrition One Pound at a Time.”
Here is a description of the established time frame and goals the project is designed
to achieve. The Mobile Pantry going forward from 2010 would like to include one
pound of ground meat, one pound of cheese, and one pound of a fresh fruit or
vegetables to our rural household’s monthly food bags. If we could provide those
three items once a month it would greatly improve the nutritional value for our in-
need rural families’ diets. We have discovered, through the generosity of The Green
Bay Packer Foundation, receiving their 2009 thousand dollar grant and delivering
the funded meat and cheese, that there is a great need and appreciation of fresh
nutritional food. The main diet of people in poverty is not healthy, long on starchy
and fatty foods and short on proteins, fresh fruits and vegetables. We would like to
ease that need by delivering one pound of ground meat, one pound of cheese, and
one pound of a fresh fruit or vegetable, to families that need it. Currently we are
running 158 to 179 people in 55-60 households.
Who will benefit from this project?
More than 60 rural households in
outlying rural area households like Rosholt, Amherst, Amherst Junction, Almond,
Bancroft, and Junction City would be benefiting greatly from the addition of protein
and fresh produce to their diets. How many times have we heard, “People who eat
fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced eating plan are less likely to develop conditions
such as stroke, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, bone loss,
and cancers of the mouth, stomach, and colon? In addition, these highly nutritious foods
may reduce the risk of developing kidney stones.
The myth is that rural Poverty rates are particularly low in the Midwest compared to
other regions, is this true?
In actuality, poverty in the rural Midwest region is more likely to be hidden than lower in
incidence. Only the South, with 51.2 percent of all rural poverty, has more individuals living
in poverty in rural areas. The North Central region is home to 25.8 percent of all people
living in poverty in rural areas.
A 1992 study points out that, characteristics such as norms against conspicuous
consumption, the ideology that hard work will automatically result in financial growth, and
the prevailing view that "we're all just folks" combine to hide what can be large differences
in income and wealth within communities.
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