Aurora pantry celebrates new location to help students

A food distribution site inside a high school is a new concept for an Aurora pantry looking to close nutrition gaps for students and their families.

The Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry celebrated the opening of a new branch Friday at East Aurora High School with a ribbon-cutting ceremony with District 131 officials.

The pantry opened Nov. 4 after moving from a different East Aurora location that had become too small, Director Diane Renner said.

The site in the school at 801 Zeigler Ave. is well-situated to serve families who otherwise might have trouble getting to the pantry's main hub on the west side of the city at 834 N. Highland Ave., Renner said.

When the school site opened late last year, Renner said it immediately began serving public clients from 9 to 11 a.m. every Saturday. She and the dozen or so volunteers who staff the east side location knew they wanted to serve students, too, but they took about a month to develop a program.

Beginning Jan. 25, students have been able to stop by the pantry after school on the second and fourth Thursday of each month to fill a giant Ikea bag with staples to take home.

"The Ikea bags are very heavy when they walk out," Renner said, filled with pasta, cereal, meats, produce and canned vegetables.

Renner said any student who wants food assistance is eligible to get help at the school, where 68.9 percent of 3,800 students are classified as low-income, according to state report card demographic data.

"If they're coming for food," she said, "we're going to give it to them."

Both students and public clients get to make choices from a market-style setup to decrease food waste by allowing people to take home items they know they'll eat, Renner said. Roughly 120 people get food from the pantry at the high school each Saturday.

A renovation at the school allowed space for the pantry to open. Renner said she hopes to increase services across Aurora to help more students who are food-insecure.