On a cool, calm afternoon, Jessica Spiese takes on another visitor. As the line extends to the doorway, Spiese asks an elderly woman for her ID and current utility bill, to make sure that her address and income level haven’t changed.
This is sometimes difficult because renewing a license costs money, and people visiting the Ada Food Pantry might be running short on that at the moment.
Spiese is one of many Ada citizens who volunteer at the Ada Food Pantry, which is located off of Main Street and inside the First Presbyterian Church of Ada. The pantry is open on Tuesdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon, and it serves Liberty Township and Washington Township residents.
According to Jack Duffy, the pantry’s board chair, the pantry serves between 155 and 170 families per year. Out of those, there are 25-30 families use the pantry every month.
The pantry allows each visitor to come once a month, and all visi- tors are walked through a station- oriented process to select which foods they want. Visitors start at dairy and end with toiletries, with shelves of canned vegetables, fruit, and pasta in between to complete their checklists. Each visitor’s food lasts them around three days, and is equivalent to “an emergency food supply,” according to Duffy.
“People come here from all walks of life,” Duffy, also the pastor at Ada’s First Baptist Church, said. “We try to meet needs of those who are hungry–to be a stopgap measure.”
When Duffy says “all walks of life,” he means it. The pantry serves 16 senior citizens every month, as well as many adults living on disability, families with between one and nine children, and single mothers who work at local restaurants to try to raise multiple children.
“There is a good amount of poverty [in Ada],” Duffy, a 20-year resident of Ada, said. Although the village is made up of just two square miles, it houses two mobile home communities.
“I know a former Ada mayor who once said, and I believe it to be true, that you can break Ada into three sections: the townies, the university, and appalachia.”
In working to help those in need, Ada Food Pantry volunteers make monthly trips to the Lima Save-A-Lot to gather food. Most of the pantry’s food, however, is donated by churches and individual citizens.
The pantry receives produce from local farmers when in season, and local groups like the Newman Club and the Boy Scouts also help donate. The Ada Public Library offers members the option to donate food to the pantry in exchange for the payment of their book fines.
“There’s really a sense of community,” Spiese said. “We’re the only food pantry in Ada, so we do a lot here.”
While community service is a plus, Duffy believes that volunteering at the pantry serves a more humbling purpose as well.
“We get to know these people as individuals, and try to develop a friendship and relationship with these people,” Duffy said. “We know that we could be in that situation too. We’re not above them.”