Food pantry’s goal is to feed those who need it

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — It’s as American as Apple Pie and steroids-free baseball — the belief that no one in this country, child or adult, should have to go to bed hungry unless they are fasting or trying the latest fad diet.

That’s a belief that Jim Harlin, director for the Gallup Community Pantry, also shares.

“No one has to go hungry in McKinley County,” he said Wednesday.

He could also say the say thing for Cibola County, since the Gallup pantry also supplies food to the one in Grants.

“They’re actually a branch of ours,” he said, adding that just this past weekend the Gallup pantry delivered a major load of bread, tomatoes and potatoes to Grants for people in that area.

Last year, the Gallup Community Pantry supplied more than $3 million worth of food to some 7,000 people in northwestern New Mexico. The pantry also provided some produce to residents of Arizona, but Harlin said it’s prohibited from supplying any food from the commodities program outside the state.

It wasn’t until Harlin, with the assistance of local groups, began pushing for more services to people in Gallup some eight years ago that this whole concept of a community pantry was first brought up. Up until then, only the Catholic Charities and groups like the Southwest Indian Foundation had programs to feed the hungry and most of these were geared toward Native Americans.

But Harlin became the driving force that resulted in the pantry getting bigger each year and moving into a new building two years ago that includes 15,000 square feet of warehouse space and 6,000 square feet of community space.

Nowadays, there is a program within the Gallup Community Pantry for everyone in the county, from those who get food stamps to those who have made it to the Gallup millionaire list.

There’s even this one program that allows anyone — regardless of annual income — to buy a box of basic foods at a great bargain. A $10 box provides more than $20 worth of food items and a $15 box provides food that would cost $30 to $40 at the store.

Harlin sells about 15 of these boxes a week and doesn’t like to promote it. “We don’t want grocery stores to feel like we are competing with them,” he said.

There’s also a program — called the Backpack Program — that provides teenagers with snacks and food they can take home on the weekends.

“This is only for a limited number of students,” Harlin said, adding that the program is now at 11 county schools.