The Ministry of Mission and Outreach at Casas Adobes Congregational Church will institute a new program to help children and families living nearby Keeling Elementary School.

In partnership with Keeling and the Community Food Bank, they will begin, in late March, to pilot a once-a-month mobile food pantry open to anyone in the school's vicinity. By the time the program gets fully under way this coming fall, they expect to provide food for hundreds of individuals when food stamps run out at the end of each month.

The pantry will replace their Keeling BackPack program one week out of the month. The BackPack program, which provides supplemental weekend food bags to 100 children, will operate as usual during the other weeks of the month.

The food pantry operation, which is also conducted at a small number of other locations around the city, requires seven to ten volunteers. The new food pantry team will need to include a few volunteers with strong backs and a few with extra empathy for those requiring special assistance.

One Wednesday a month the team will help unload pallets of food (provided by the Community Food Bank at no cost to CACC-UCC), arrange food on tables set up in the school cafeteria, assist as needed those availing themselves of the program for the 90 minutes or so the doors are open in the afternoon, and clean up afterward. The pilot dates for this spring are March 28th, April 25th, and May 16th.