Editor’s note: This is a two-part series ahead of the Good Neighbor Fest, which is taking place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. I’ll be there on behalf of our Buy Nothing group.

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Ange Kaplan-Chambers opened a Little Free Pantry in North Austin earlier this this year. Photo by Addie Broyles.

On a busy corner in a North Austin neighborhood, a bright pink table awaits its next visitor.

It could be a teen walking home after school. A retiree stopping by after a shopping trip at the nearby H-E-B. A family from two blocks over strolling up with paper bags filled with hamburger buns.

The Little Free Pantry ATX is one of more than a dozen informal food distribution hubs across Central Texas that provide immediate food access — from unmanaged donations from anyone who chooses to give — to anyone who needs something to eat.

Inspired by the Little Free Library movement, which dates back to 2009, the LFP movement, as it is known, popped up around 2016, with two volunteer-run organizations offering guidance on how to start one and maps of where they are located.

This map from LittleFreePantry.org shows where some of the mutual aid food pantries are in Austin.

Ange Kaplan-Chambers, who runs the North Austin one in my neighborhood, visited a food pantry in 2008 when she was in need of food assistance. “Standing in line, doing an interview. It made me nervous,” she says.

By 2016, her financial situation had changed, and she and her husband bought a house on the corner of Rundberg and Quail Meadow, a half a mile from Rundberg and North Lamar, one of the busiest intersections in the city.

“I always knew that I had to do something with that corner,” she says. “There’s always foot traffic. It’s just a busy corner.”

Putting up a political sign didn’t really do much for her. “I’m the person yelling at the corner, great.”

The years passed. She had a baby and perfected the art of hand-me-downs, always cleaning out pantries and closets to keep up with the constant flow of stuff that comes in and out of houses with young kids.

As the pandemic settled in, the North Austin product designer, who is originally from New Jersey, joined her local Buy Nothing group. She says that the non-materialistic viewpoint she was getting from Buy Nothing collided with her frustration that in a country with so much wealth, so many people could go without something as basic as food.

RELATED: Moving is hell, but I’m in Buy Nothing heaven

After the 2021 freeze, she knew she wanted to do more than give away material goods on Facebook.

So, seven months ago, using whatever materials she had in the house and a few YouTube videos, Kaplan-Chambers built a table with a roof and painted it bubble gum pink. “I don’t know anything about building,” she says. “But when I realized what I was doing, it happened really fast.”

She found the Little Free Pantry movement online, signed up, printed out a few of the downloads that explained the concept and started a Facebook page.

She put six cans of baby cereal that her son had grown out of, and the pantry was officially open.

Kaplan-Chambers built this stand, painted it pink and then started posting about it on a Facebook page. Photo by Addie Broyles.

Instead, they act as a micro food hub. “It’s a train, and people get off and go where they are supposed to go,” she says. “You’re making that connection.”

Kaplan-Chambers says she wanted to give people a place to pick up food that doesn’t intersect with religion. “This is not about religion. This is about humanity. It’s about helping your brothers and sisters.”

This is one of the newer mutual aid hubs to have launched in Austin over the past few years. In 2020, the ATX Free Fridge Project launched at the award-winning Nixta restaurant in East Austin. It now has four free food pick-up sites where people can drop off refrigerated and frozen items.

This map shows the sites of the ATX Free Fridge pantries and several other mutual aid boxes. Find out more at linktr.ee/atxfreefridge.

Although many new mini food pantries — sometimes called a “Blessings Box” if associated with a church — have opened from Georgetown to Kyle, a longtime Little Free Pantry off Cameron Road, which opened more than four years ago, recently disappeared.

She says that building trust with neighbors — both those who make the donations and those who pick them up, which are not mutually exclusive — is a critical part of any Little Free Pantry.

The ATX Free Fridge Project started in 2020 and now has four refrigerators that are available to receive donations from anyone. There is no sign-up process or proof-of-need requirement to take from the fridges or the pantries.

All the donations must be "take what you need, give what you can,” according to the The Little Free Pantry Project website:

“It is designed to be a space free of judgment, stigma or criticism of a person’s situation or health. The pantry model of giving to and receiving from works well because many of us have enough, or more than enough and despite where we live, there are those who don’t have enough. Through this feedback loop of giving and receiving we become stronger and more resilient. Additionally, we believe this happening on a local level makes communities safer and healthier places to live.”

The organization surveyed hundreds of pantry hosts across the world, and 80% said they were more connected to their neighbors because of the pantry they hosted.

Even though the donation and sharing of food is generally covered by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, Kaplan-Chambers and other pantries don’t typically accept prepared or frozen foods, but many other grocery staples are: dried pasta, canned goods, fresh produce, bread, ramen noodles, socks, soap, cooking oil, flour, little packets of oatmeal.

Kaplan-Chambers checks the box 3-4 times a day, always leaving lots of space between her and the folks who are using the stand as a way to protect their privacy.

“We don’t know who uses the pantry, and it doesn’t matter,” Kaplan-Chambers says. “We can’t solve these gigantic problems: starvation in other countries, immigration, grid failure. We have executive dysfunction, so we do nothing.”

“I can’t imagine not having it there now,” she says. “People tell me about how they struggle and how the box has helped them, but I don’t take any credit for this. I painted it, clean it up, post photos of the group. If anyone deserves credit, it’s people who have dropped off food.”

Melissa Hollowell is one of those regular donors.

Hollowell, who lives in the neighborhood known as Quail Creek, noticed the stand right away and, within a few days, had made her first drop.

“It’s providing for people who can’t access more conventional programs because of their transportation or not having a place to store a bunch of stuff. You’re hungry, stop by, grab an apple, ramen. You’re fed for the moment. It’s not a long term. It’s not meant to be long term.”

Hollowell, who is originally from Corpus Christi, says she’s always had an active charitable life, but little has been as fulfilling as stocking the Little Free Pantry. “We think that the (hungry) individual is missing out on the world, but the world is missing out on this person and what they are contributing to society. You can’t do your best in the world because hunger takes you over mentally and psychologically. It’s a primal force that drives you.”

She buys about $30 extra in groceries and personal health supplies each week to add to the stand. “I’m not a Musk or a Bezos. I can only do what I can do, but if that’s one less hungry person…”

She trails off.

“If I had that kind of money, I could really do some damage.”

She continues: “It’s so easy to write a check or to make a donation, and then people say, ‘I did my good deed for the day.’ You can do more than one. If everybody did one thing. Imagine the cumulative effect.

We humans want to do the whole thing. If we can’t finish it, we don’t want to start it. But, we can’t finish it if we don’t start it.”

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Look for part two about our local plant stand coming tomorrow.

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Addie

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