Jam the Pantry Feeds Jaguars This Thanksgiving

Although they didn’t quite make their goal of two tons of donations, Paw’s Pantry is nevertheless delighted with this year’s holiday food drive.

By Paris Garnier

Orange crates with cartoon jaguars are scattered across campus throughout the year, but during the holiday season, they can determine if someone has a happy Thanksgiving or not. This week saw Paw’s Pantry roll out for another Jam the Pantry food drive, and despite missing their goal of two tons, they gathered 1.64 tons of food and are overall pleased with the seamless motion of the drive.

Jam the Pantry officially began on Oct. 15 and ended on Nov. 15, but the Paw’s committee spent the entire semester preparing for it. Months of coordinating lead up to a busy Tuesday when 60 volunteers spent three shifts collecting, sorting, and shelving thousands of pounds of food. Volunteers came from a variety of IUPUI schools and departments, as well as a group of 12-year-old boys from the Chapel Hill 7th and 8th Grade Center.

“Our committee is like, six people deep, so if we didn’t have all these volunteers, we’d have to do it [ourselves] and it’s just not possible,” Chrissie Geels, chair of Paw’s Pantry, said. “We could not be more grateful for all of our volunteers.”

The first shift of volunteers gathered donations from the crates and organizations, such as the Center for Young Children, and brought them back to Barnes & Noble in the campus center where they were sorted and weighed. The second shift tidied up and double-checked the crate locations; the third shift put the crates back and continued the sorting and shelving.

With so much to do and space limited in the Cavanaugh storage unit, the logistic challenges were almost overwhelming. Geels described it as molehills turning into mountains, but nevertheless felt good about the cause.

“This is the best problem I’ve ever had, we just have too much stuff and I just gotta figure out what to do with it, but other than that, everything is great,” she said.

Paw’s collected most of the donations between 9 a.m. and noon on Tuesday; individuals and groups gave throughout the month, but most food came in that three hour window. To show their gratitude for those who helped, Nov. 30 will be a hot chocolate social for all Paw’s volunteers.

“Every little bit helps. It goes back to the adage that nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something. No one person filled up the pantry and filled up the storage unit, that was hundreds, if not thousands of people all over campus,” Geels said.

Once the shelves were filled, the time came to give it all away. On Wednesday and Thursday, during their normal 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. hours, patrons were given a reusable tote and allowed to fill it with whatever they needed, no points to worry about. This is a change from last year’s holiday basket system, which took too much labor and didn’t prioritize the customer’s individual needs. Paw’s served 90 clients and gave out about 1,900 items over the course of two days.

Despite posting their list of specific items, three foods are donated the most: canned green beans, canned corn, and canned pumpkin. Paw’s is more than happy to accept them, and understands that they’re popular because they’re cheap and commonly eaten, but wonders if they should even still ask for them.

“It’s really funny: from Jam the Pantry last year, only a couple weeks ago we got rid of all our pumpkin stuff, and people just donated more pumpkin stuff,” Taylor Rhodes, Paw’s graduate student assistant, said. “So we’ll just keep it on there until it goes.”

Jam the Pantry leftovers will be put back on the shelves with regular items once Thanksgiving break is over. Expiration dates are carefully monitored before and after items are put in the pantry. Estimates indicate that Paw’s has enough food overall to last until spring break.

In the last two years, Paw’s has struggled with the centerpiece of Thanksgiving: turkey. Paw’s wants to provide them, and supplied gift cards for them in the past, but decided that supplementing the meal overall was a better way to help.

“We decided we had so much going on, we were just going to worry about the other stuff, and the idea behind having all the thanksgiving themed items is then that will alleviate the cost of their thanksgiving meal,” Geels said. “Then they’d have more money to spend on the turkey or to family or presents or travel.”

Paw’s also provided recipe cards to classic dishes like sweet potato pie and green bean casserole. Once the pantry was fully stocked on Tuesday afternoon, Geels and Rhodes made one last emergency run to gather perishable items needed for cooking, like butter.

Because Thanksgiving is a food-centered holiday, Jam the Pantry is Paw’s only significant, themed food drive for the fall semester. Groups and schools in IUPUI are going to have about six more drives just to keep the shelves full, but this is it for special drives.

Jam the Pantry was not always in the hands of students; the office of community engagement ran the holiday food drive before Paw’s took over two years ago. Although their growth has been slow, Paw’s is satisfied with maintaining steady donation numbers and will continue to push the goal of two tons.

“We’re hoping that next year that either we hit our two ton goal or we just keep doing better than the year before,” Rhodes said. “We’re excited, the fact that it was just six people trying to run this thing and we were able to get that much food.”

As for this year’s turnout in both volunteers and donations, Paw’s is nothing less than overjoyed.

“It took this whole village to get this done and now thanks to everybody’s concerted efforts, we will hopefully have no Jaguars going hungry this Thanksgiving season,” Geels said.