Community Pantry

by Ryan Benson Tan

Despite the difficulties the pandemic has brought into each one of us, it is worse for most. The “Bayanihan” spirit of us Filipinos live on as community pantries sprouted in the different parts of the Philippines last March 2021. The idea behind the community pantry was that people could take as much as they need and donate whatever they can.

We discovered One Guadalupe setting up their community pantry last April 20, 2021. They are a non-government organization that is composed of and managed by Guadalupehanon youth and several community organizations that aims to unify and mobilize the youth to address common issues faced by the residents and entities of Barangay Guadalupe. They have 5 various locations for their pantries which operate every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are allocated for repacking, sorting out donations and buying of goods. While Sundays are open to their feeding program.

For One Guadalupe, the organization has the manpower and time for most of them are student youths and volunteers during who can dedicate their rime during off hours from classes but they have limited resources. They need donors to keep themselves sustainable. For HCC, we neither have the time and manpower to set up our own community pantries but we have the resources. Thus we worked hand in hand with One Guadalupe to fill in our gaps. Since April 20, 2021 until to date, we have been sending out weekly supplies of rice, eggs and noodles to help the sustainability of One Guadalupe in their weekly operations. Thank you for sharing. To God be the Glory!

** first published in Ang Panimalay 2Q 2021