From porch to pantry: Nonprofit makes giving back easy
By Emily McLeod
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ATLANTA (WUPA) — Walking out to your front porch could mean a bag of food for someone in need.
The national nonprofit PORCH Communities has several chapters across the metro Atlanta area, including one in Marietta.
Essentially, neighbors leave nonperishable food donations on their front porch. Volunteers with a local chapter come by to pick it up for those in need.
Porch Marietta chapter member Debby Kramb was out on a cold, wet morning picking up food donations for the nonprofit.
“I’m a retired Cobb County teacher, and so the first food bank that we started to get organized was to fill up Brumby Elementary School snacks, and so I realized how important that was for families, and that’s why I got involved,” said Kramb. “I’ve been doing it for almost four years.”
Once the food has been picked up on designated pickup days, it is then sorted.
“It fills me with gratitude, really,” said PORCH Marietta chapter leader Liz Platner. She started the PORCH Marietta Chapter in 2022, and said that the demand has not slowed down.
“We’re rising to the need,” Platner said. “We’re meeting the needs, so, as much as we have more people who need it, we have a lot more volunteers who are willing to help.”
After the food is sorted by PORCH Marietta volunteers, it’s then brought to the Faith Pantry at Faith Lutheran Church. From there, the Faith Pantry volunteers, known as the Pantry Chicks, sort the food into bags for a local food giveaway benefitting families and seniors.
PORCH Marietta works with 15 different food pantries, including the Faith Pantry.
Faith Pantry volunteer Mitzi Lewis said PORCH Marietta is an important partner.
“Every month we get a delivery. We take approximately 175 to 200 bags over to Brumby Elementary for the families,” Lewis said. “Twenty-five of those being for seniors that are over 75 to 80-year-olds with smaller things in them.”
Lewis said the people who receive these bags need them.
“If we can take something off mom and dad, that they have a couple of meals that now they can pay the light bill, and that’s the goal,” Lewis said.
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