“This is excellent,” said Michael from Gallows Hill as he waited for basics like bread and milk. “There is no way a lot of people would survive without it.”

In addition, some who have never needed food assistance are seeking out The Salem Pantry after a job loss or a cut back. At first, some are embarrassed by their new situation, but the staff and volunteers put them at ease. “We reassure them,” said Samantha Johanson, the organization's manager of operations. “You have to eat.”

Stacey from North Salem, recently laid off from her job at a hotel in Boston, visited the Pantry’s mobile market for the first time to supplement her regular grocery shopping. When asked if she had difficulty making the decision for food assistance, she said, “I’m kind of over it now. Money is a little tight.”

Just as PEM enriches the soul with art and culture, the museum has committed to nourishing our community. On Giving Tuesday, PEM launched Feeding Community, reaching out to the museum’s passionate members, staff and volunteers to encourage financial, material and volunteer support to help reduce food insecurity in our region. The initiative will continue through the month of December and the two organizations will continue to partner well into the future.

Through the month of December, financial contributions made to either PEM’s Annual Fund or The Salem Pantry will help unlock a challenge pledge of $20,000, generously made possible by Larry and Atsuko Fish, of the Fish Family Foundation. Once each organization receives 200 donations of any amount, the Feeding Community challenge gift will be distributed.

Robyn Burns became executive director of The Salem Pantry in March of 2020, knowing that the 30-year-old organization was crucial to the community in their work to eradicate hunger in Salem and the North Shore. Little did she know how much the need would grow. With record unemployment, The Salem Pantry is signing up 100 new households every month, serving six times more people than normal and anticipates distributing nearly one million pounds of food this year. The organization made about 650 food drops for Thanksgiving that included turkeys, chickens to roast and even gift cards for grocery shopping because the need was so great.

Leading up to 2020, The Salem Pantry was forming a strategy to grow its mobile markets, but the pandemic accelerated that plan and there are now a dozen sites around the city, including local schools, housing sites, Lifebridge shelter and Espacio in the Point Neighborhood. These mobile sites, combined with home deliveries, have provided a monthly average of 75,000 pounds of food (an estimated 62,500 meals) since mid-March.

Amy Witherbee became a volunteer during the first week of lockdown in March. “It gets me out of the house and is necessary for me not to get frustrated,” Witherbee said from the back of the delivery truck. “Our country has done such a bad job with this. I nearly cried watching a man wait in line at Walgreens with two cans of creamed corn. Why can’t we fix this?”

Her husband Doug Soons was helping out with grocery shopping for individuals in the community and joined up with The Salem Pantry as well, putting his six-foot-two frame to use, offloading heavy boxes of frozen food. On this day, Soons fetched a pineapple inside the building for a woman waiting in a fleece hat and jacket. “Just for you,” Soons said from behind his mask.

The couple have been joined by friends from the local community, forming social groups who help out together. “I know 80 percent of these people by name,” said Witherbee, “and they are helping my Spanish improve.”

Burns is excited about the increased community support through this very visible partnership with PEM to address the issue head on. On the single day of Giving Tuesday alone, The Salem Pantry took in 82 donations. If there is anything good to come from the pandemic, it’s the effect around destigmatizing the need for food and nourishing the community with dignity, she says. In addition to having volunteers who also benefit from The Salem Pantry, the direct openness about the need is helpful, says Burns. “We really try to make it centered around the guests who are coming and make it a space that is positive and welcoming.”

The sites, which recently moved indoors, have become the epicenter of other services like COVID testing, toiletry distribution and remote learning outreach for public schools. With unemployment assistance unknown, COVID cases rising this winter and the restrictions about the number of people indoors, plus a desire to keep people from forming lines in the cold, operating the mobile markets will feel like “new territory,” said Burns. All of this requires volunteers, as does stocking the new warehouse at Shetland Park.

Last spring, Jennifer Percy volunteered in “a small army” of people unloading delivery trucks from the Greater Boston Food Bank and storing the food in a church on Margin Street. At the mobile market, she enjoys being in the fresh air and helping people carry their bags to their cars.

“I have no idea what anybody’s story is,” she said. “I try not to question. We all know that a minimum wage job does not make enough to live on. There is a range of ethnicities, immigrants, non immigrants. Sometimes it’s families, people shopping for their neighbors, students. You can’t generalize.”

Just then, a young woman with an IKEA bag loaded down with heavy frozen food, struggled to put the bag on her shoulder. “Are you OK?” Percy asked with concern. “That looks heavy.”

Like many who are bolstered by the food they receive, the volunteers are finding nourishment in the act of giving back.