LEWISTON – After 16 years of giving food to Lewiston-Auburn’s hungry people, the Good Shepherd Food Pantry hopes to teach people how to cook, too.
In its new home, the Wallace School overlooking Lewiston’s Kennedy Park, the charity plans to create a nutrition center out of old classrooms.
Inside would be a state-of-the-art kitchen where people could learn how to bake a chicken, prepare vegetables or take on challenging recipes. The aim is to help people to eat well once they’ve got the food to prepare.
“Let’s get people healthy,” director Joyce Gagnon said. “Let’s get them what they need.”
It’s all part of a new and broader plan for the charity, which reopens Monday at the old school.
“We’ve got a lot of plans, now that we’re here,” Gagnon said.
It is starting slow, though. A lot of money will be needed first.
To make all the hoped-for changes to the century-old building, including an elevator, about $500,000 is needed. Fundraising is already under way.
“I don’t know when it’ll happen,” Gagnon said, standing in the building’s main hallway on Wednesday beside boxes filled with cans and dry goods.
For now, the focus is on the move.
Volunteers plan to do most of the work today, during one of the few weekdays of the year that the pantry routinely closes.
“We’re trying to make sure we don’t close down when people need us,” Gagnon said.
In all, the charity feeds an estimated 2,500 local people each month. It estimates that 70 percent of those people – or 1,750 – are children.
“People say there’s no hunger problem here,” she said. “They don’t know.”
For its whole 16-year history, the pantry has operated out of a former pharmacy and paint store at 430 Lisbon St. It was begun as an offshoot of the Good Shepherd Food-Bank, which was located across the street during the 1990s.
In 2002, after the food bank moved its statewide organization to a warehouse in Auburn, the food pantry broke away. Sisters of Charity Health System took over its operation.
“It’s a perfect match,” Gagnon said. The charity’s history of helping people dovetailed with the pantry’s mission.
Another Sisters of Charity initiative, Lots to Gardens, plans to move into the school’s basement.
That move, like other proposed programs, will await renovations.
Gagnon hopes perhaps to start an exercise program in a basement room. And she hopes to encourage sharing between cultures by sharing Somali and American food.
Somalis might learn how to make an American dish, and they could teach native Mainers about their food.
Gagnon knows. Food is where peace begins.
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