As Thanksgiving nears, generosity is more prominent than ever in our community. However, throughout the year, when giving back isn’t as prevalent, how are people in need being considered?
First Community Church’s food pantry, Heart to Heart, is a local mission aiming to respond to God’s commandment to love one another. According to Heart to Heart Food Pantry’s website, their vision is to cultivate a loving community, honor individual gifts, feed bodies and souls, and see everyone as a child of God.
Heart to Heart’s manager, Yohan Kim, aims to lead with goodness and empathy, becoming the heartbeat behind the pantry.
According to foodhelpline.org, the pantry runs a drive-through on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon, offering care packages for typically 60 to 70 families. On top of this, they started pop-up pantries in 2020 at various locations.
“We’re serving 65 zip codes and 17 counties this year. That means that people are bypassing other pantries to come to us. I think that says a lot about how we’re operating,” Kim said.
In order to come up with the goods the pantry is able to give out, they have partnered with many local businesses, allowing companies throughout the city to give back to their community.
“We have long-standing relationships with places like Mark’s, Giant Eagle at Kingsdale, Penzeys Spices and Columbus Humane,” Kim said.
From schools to police departments, organizations have proven to come together to provide many of the necessary goods.
“For the past year, Windemere has donated leftover refrigerated food every Thursday during the school year… Hastings has eight large pumpkins and a dozen mini pumpkins from a recent school garden harvest, so they will drop that off… We just got stuff from the Share and Learn Garden… We have a great relationship with the UA Police Department; they have given us thousands of pounds of food… We [also] have a relationship with Nothing Bundt Cakes. With leftover ingredients, they make us a bunch of cakes every Thursday,” Kim said.
Donations aren’t the only way people can join the mission; there are many opportunities for people to volunteer.
“Just volunteer. A lot of teens do the shop and stock shifts. In the summers, we are usually kept afloat by teenagers, from both UA and Grandview, who volunteer in the drive-through in addition to everything else,” Kim said.
Generosity has been seen across the whole business. From volunteers and donors to the pantry customers, Heart to Heart’s aim of spreading kindness, upholding respect and cultivating love has been accomplished.
“A big misconception would be the demeanor of the people who are in need of help in this country… [There is a lot of] generosity [in] the people who are coming here to get stuff. I’ve seen people jump-start other cars in line… Yesterday, someone who was getting food gave a dollar and 77 cents because they felt the need to pass along the generosity… There have been a number of times I’ve had somebody say, ‘I have neighbors from Mexico. I share my stuff with them,’ or ‘My sister has a bunch of kids, I share with them,’” Kim said.
Since the early 1980s, Heart to Heart has grown into a valuable community resource aiming to ensure food security while upholding its culture of compassion. The team relies on each crew member to carry out this operation.
“When [people] turn left or right onto Cambridge, they leave with a smile…That’s one of those things that anybody can do,” Kim said.
At this time of year, empathy, consideration and appreciation are usually spread all around communities.
“The biggest lesson if you’re around this place is that hope always wins in the end. Where hope doesn’t win is when it goes unsaid and unspoken. When you have a desire to help or when you see a need out there, but you don’t do anything, or you wait for somebody else to do something first. Don’t be afraid to be the one who puts the word out,” Kim said.
