I saw an interesting story on the news last week about a family that opened up their porch as a food and supply pantry three years ago when the pandemic blew into town. Three years later, it’s now known as Porch Pantry Peoria and they are still going strong.
They’re in constant need of donations for the porch as they average between 30 to 50 people a day in need of food and supplies.
I thought I’d go and meet the people responsible for this and hopefully get them some donations for Porch Pantry Peoria.
Here we are at the Porch Pantry Peoria, the sign gives it away real quickly! You don’t see that on most front porches!
Here’s the couple responsible for the Porch Pantry Peoria, Kelli and Charles Martin.
They told me that they’ve gotten to be known around town and more people are stopping by every week.
It’s really nice of them to provide service for their neighborhood and for Peoria. They have a facebook group with over 5200 members (I just joined). You can post if you need something, if you have a job, if you need a job and it’s a real nice group of people on there.
The porch has several storage units and coolers to house the food and supplies.
Sadly, as you can see the shelves are somewhat bare and they could use your help with donations. I’ll have all the donation information at the end of this blog post.
This year they’ve started several community gardens in their yard for fresh vegetables and fruit to give away.
There’s also a little free library in the front yard, complete with portraits of Richard Pryor and George Washington Carver. The portraits were drawn by local artist, Joshua Hawkins. Check out his facecrack page here and you can purchase his artwork here.
How To Donate To Porch Pantry Peoria
There’s several ways to donate and help to keep Porch Pantry Peoria in operation.
You can bring food, clothing and supplies to the address below or you could ship items to that address from Amazon.
You can also donate cash via these sites:
Cash App.. $PorchPantry2020
Venmo... Charles-Martin-297
Pay pal... cmarti297@gmail.com
Or you could do like me and drop off a donation in person and thank Kelli and Charles for the wonderful work they’ve done for the last three years for our community!
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c/o Kelli and Charles Martin
1122 N. Ellis Street
Peoria
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Related Post: An (Overdue) Afternoon Visit To Peoria Animal Protection Services.