Community food pantry distributes Thanksgiving baskets

Tuesday, the St. Martin Village Community Food Pantry distributed Thanksgiving baskets in addition to its monthly food giveaway.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – When Executive Director Rebecca Webb co-founded Community Inspired Solutions, which began with a summer program for kids in the St. Martin Village area, she had no idea that she’d eventually start a food pantry.

“This keeps me going. I’m 71 years old. I retired about ten years ago. Sat at home and did nothing. Then it was like, ‘okay, I need to get up and find something to do.’ That was in 2014, and there was a lot of gun violence that year. It was like every two or three weeks, somebody was getting shot, somebody was getting killed. And we wanted to see what we could do in the community to help out, especially with the young people,” said Webb.

This past summer, while Webb was running the organization’s summer camp, she noticed that seniors in the St. Martin’s Village area would come to shop for the extra groceries from the kids’ program.

“What we found when we came out here when we started to set up the extras to distribute it, we had quite a few seniors in the community that were coming and that were shopping,” said Webb.

In September, the St. Martin Village Community Food Pantry at Charles H. Quillings Neighborhood Building began, and has continued every third Tuesday of the month since.

Tuesday, in addition to its usual food pantry, 50 Thanksgiving turkey baskets were given to people in the community.

“We advertised the last couple of weeks that we’d be doing a Thanksgiving basket giveaway with our free food pantry and families have called in and gave us their names,” said Webb.

Anna Greene’s second time shopping at the food pantry was Tuesday. She’s lived in the St. Martin Village neighborhood for 57 years.

“Well, it’s great for the community and so many people are taking advantage of it and I think it’s a great program,” said Greene.

According to Webb, finding 50 turkeys for the baskets was a challenge.

“We were still 10 short so what we’ve done is we’ve purchased 10 Kroger gift cards and those last 10 families will receive everything else and then a gift card for their turkeys,” said Webb.

In addition to the turkey dinners, the organization unloaded more than two thousand pounds of food from organizations it partners with, including God’s Pantry.

According to United Way of the Bluegrass and Waypoint Center Manager Gerri Botts-Lilly, it’s challenging to find fresh produce in the neighborhood.

“In this area it is a food desert. And so therefore, to be able to have fresh fruits and vegetables and have access to that…that means a lot,” said Botts-Lilly.

Community Inspired Solutions will set up its food pantry next on December 14 at the Charles H. Quillings Neighborhood Building. Webb says a toy drive giveaway will be held on December 19 at the Community Inspired Solutions offices.