Last year on 7/17/21 we opened our Community Pantry at Discoveries: The Library at the Mall, serving the families in our community by distributing diapers, wipes, hygiene supplies and menstrual products. The pantry has now been open for one year!
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Each week we are serving more than 60 families - the need for these supplies in our area is very real. I’ve attached a year-end report for review- but in short, we’ve served 1890 families from 50 different Maryland zipcodes. We’ve distributed 2821 packs of diapers (almost 67,700 diapers!) and 708 packs of menstrual supplies. Someone in every family now has a library card as well so that they can take advantage of all of the benefits AACPL can provide.
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Aside from the weekly distribution, the pantry has grown in many beautiful directions. In June, we created summer kindergarten readiness bags with books, art supplies, bilingual flashcards, math workbooks and more for pantry families, using a portion of our county ARPA grant. This past year we also had a take one/leave one winter weather wear rack, regularly distributed discarded books, 3 times put covid tests in all pantry bags, offered masks to families as part of pantry pickup and more. Our monthly second service Saturday projects also grew out of the pantry and we packed and delivered emergency menstrual supply bags to Lighthouse Shelter and Chrysalis House Women’s Recovery Center twice. We made winter homeless toiletry bags for the winter overnight shelter at the Stanton Center in Annapolis. In partnership with the Severn and Odenton libraries, we attended the KingdomKare Center Food distribution in February to hand out diapers. We also have been fortunate to be able to supply the Eastport-Annapolis Neck Library enough free menstrual products for their public bathrooms.
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The need is never-ending, and although we have a great network of donations and a small ARPA grant from the county, we struggle every week to have enough supplies for our families. I invite you to continue to spread the word about the pantry- both about the opportunity to pick up supplies and the opportunity to donate. A flier with pantry information is also attached to this email. If you’d like to support the pantry with a donation drive or other larger scale support, please email pantry@aacpl.net.
Thank you for your support of our Community Pantry!
Reprinted with permission by Rachel A. Myers, Branch Manager, Discoveries: the Library at the Mall
