KENDALLVILLE — For decades, Friendship Food Pantry’s mission has been simple: help feed those who can’t feed themselves.
And the pantry, operated through Common Grace Ministries Inc., has been successful at doing that, providing food to those in need in the 46755 ZIP code.
But since joining Common Grace in 2012 as executive director, Angie Kidd has noticed that many of the faces she sees at Friendship Food Pantry and the ministry’s A Hope Chest furniture bank are the same from week to week and month to month.
In some cases, four generations of the same family have received assistance through the food pantry.
Late last year, she and Common Grace’s board of directors came to an important decision — one that has transformed the organization’s focus.
“We wanted to do something different,” Kidd said. “We realized we weren’t helping people.”
That’s because the very people Common Grace was created to minister to are in many instances trapped — trapped in a cycle of poverty that is passed from one generation to the next.
Common Grace began asking food pantry clients about the struggles they face in their everyday lives. Child care expenses were a common response. Lack of transportation was another. Others were incarceration and not enough money for food.
At the source of all of those issues was poverty.
So last December, Common Grace held what it called the New Way Workshop and brought in representatives from church ministries in Kokomo, Bloomington, Illinois, and Champaign, Illinois, to see how they were addressing poverty in their communities.
What they advocated was less about handing out food and more about developing and building relationships with community members in need of assistance.
Kidd and the Common Grace board were believers. “If we don’t do that, we’re not going to transform anything,” Kidd said.
Since then, other organizations have joined the cause, with the New Way Workshop serving as a springboard into the Noble New Way Movement, which Kidd said “is dedicated to creating opportunities for relationship, training and education that lead to thriving individuals in a thriving community.”
On Monday, Kidd and Noble County Economic Development Corp. Executive Director Rick Sherck took a group of people representing Common Grace, the EDC, the United Way of Noble County, Drug Free Noble County, Noble House Ministries, the Community Foundation of Noble County and the Olive B. Cole Foundation to view Kokomo Urban Outreach’s holistic approach to assisting individuals with escaping the vicious cycle of poverty.
Last year, Kokomo Urban Outreach, a ministry of Trinity United Methodist Church that was started in 2006, overhauled and expanded its programs. Those who use its food center are now asked why they need help with food.
Additionally, they’re asked: What do they like to do that they could show someone else, and what things would they like to learn?
Kokomo Urban Outreach then connects them to other programs or individuals who would benefit from what they know. There’s the Job Club for help with finding a job; the Breakthru work boot camp for those who have trouble keeping a job; the ManUp skills-building work program for boys ages 10-18; and the StepUp4Girls program for girls ages 10-18, in which they become part owners of a business.
The organization, located across the street from the Garden Square public housing complex, also offers a kitchen co-op program, where individuals pay $10 to make seven meals that feed a family of four. There are parenting classes and internship and community involvement opportunities.
The Food Connections food bank no longer receives federal funding, which has reduced red tape and limits on how Kokomo Urban Outreach can connect with its clients, which it prefers to call “neighbors” or “guests.”
“That’s our goal at Kokomo Urban Outreach: connecting people to make them self-sufficient,” the organization’s executive director, Jeff Newton, said during Monday’s tour.
“We not only want people to use the resources in our community, we want them to become resources in our community.”
Kidd envisions the same for Common Grace and the renamed Friendship Connection food pantry, which has stopped receiving federal funding and commodities and could move to a voucher system as early as the fall, in which clients would volunteer in the community or take part in educational programs to earn vouchers.
She also thinks what Common Grace does in the 46755 ZIP code can be done throughout the county.
“We have a lot of strengths in our community, and everyone who comes to us with a deficit has some type of strength,” said Becky Calhoun, executive director of Drug Free Noble County. She took part in Monday’s tour of Kokomo Urban Outreach and has been involved in the Noble New Way Movement.
There’s still much more to be decided about the nascent movement, but Kidd and others involved feel called to push it forward.