About Us
Mission: We are a nurturing community, sharing a hot meal, groceries and sustenance with all who come. We offer an opportunity to serve and be served in a safe, friendly and compassionate setting and seek to foster a sense of self, connected in relationship to others.
My Sister’s Pantry serves a hot meal as well as distributing groceries and clothing. The Pantry’s primary objective is keeping poor families from suffering homelessness. An outreach program of nonprofit FIRST Center, the Pantry is located at 621 Tacoma Ave, Tacoma 98402. Since the late twentieth century, this urban neighborhood with run-down buildings and abandoned cars has had a high level of poverty and crime. Yet a short walk across the appropriately named Division Street provides views of family homes dating from the early twentieth-century that evidence the wealth of a well-to-do urban area.
Since opening its doors to the community in 1999, My Sister’s Pantry has become the eighth largest food bank in the Tacoma area. The Pantry served 13,700 clients in 2008. Open three times a month, the caring food bank also provides substantial hot meal, served on tablecloths with metal cutlery and china. Fall and winter months are colder, wetter, holiday laden and, for many, depressing. The Pantry becomes a haven for fellowship, warmth and caring. Evening and Saturday openings mean minimum-wage-earning families can come without disrupting their work schedules.
Gradually, the Pantry has added new dimensions to its service. In fall 2002, the Pantry opened a clothing bank. The clothing bank is set up in a store-like fashion with designated areas for men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. Clothing donations are received from individuals, consignment stores and a retirement community. Pantry clients not only “shop” for needed items but often donate clean items they can no longer use.
Pantry Partners is a group of guests composed of the several ethnic groups that visit the Pantry including Native Americans, Moldavians, African Americans, and Russians. Formed in January 2004, they meet every other month to discuss issues of concern to them such as equitable distribution of food and variety of food selection, while posing solutions, such as switching to a number system instead of names on items to overcome language barriers).
Executive Director Martha Curwen brings a wealth of experience
working in both the financial and non-profit sectors.
