On Nov. 13, Chapel Hill-Carrboro's chapter of PORCH, a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting hunger relief, held a grand opening for its new community hub in Carrboro.
Sofia Edelman, PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro’s communications manager and volunteer, said PORCH has been feeding families for the last 14 years, and that the new community hub gives the organization a physical space to welcome them.
Before the hub's opening, she said PORCH was distributing food in a parking lot using a drive-thru model. Staff and volunteers often worked from and stored food in places like the Chapel Hill Public Library and the Carrboro United Methodist Church, which was not feasible, she said.
PORCH was founded in 2010 by a group of moms who had children in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, Edelman said. She said they noticed during the recession that some kids didn't have lunches, so they started a food drive in their neighborhood.
“That kind of grew and spread to other neighborhoods and created what we call the 'neighbors helping neighbors' model,” Edelman said.
The new physical space gives participants the dignity of choosing certain foods and the form they want them in, Erin Riney, the executive director of PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro, said. Prior to this space, Edelman said families were getting prepacked nonperishables and produce.
“For example, some of our families that are from Central America mentioned [they] don't really use canned foods in [their] cooking, but [they] would love dry beans,” Riney said. “We can easily communicate that to the over 130 neighborhoods that we're tapped into.”
Edelman said moving to the hub has also allowed PORCH to become partners with the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, giving it access to different programs for free food. All the food in the hub is free for recipients, and PORCH obtains about a third of the food for free, Edelman said.
