Using our Power to Make a Difference

“I’m so glad we have this kind of program that can help families.”
–Olabisi, client at Newton Food Pantry

Olabisi vividly remembers the first time she visited the Newton Food Pantry, a GBFB Agency Partner. “The first time I walked in when my kids were little…I was like, am I walking in Stop & Shop? Am I walking in Star Market?” she recalls, describing the abundance of fresh options and the dignity of the experience.

“The way it was set up and everything, you don’t feel like, oh, I’m poor and all that stuff. You don’t feel that,” she adds. At the time, Olabisi worked as a financial counselor at a hospital while raising her four young children, and the pantry helped her make ends meet as a single mother.

Now 70 and retired, Olabisi returns to the Newton Food Pantry periodically because she is on a fixed income—but she still thinks often about mothers with children. Sometimes she even feels reluctant to visit the pantry, believing that young families need the food more.

“How are they going to feed their kids?” she wonders, citing the high cost of groceries. “And their kids need balanced nutrition.”

“You [donors] are changing the lives of mothers and children. There are a lot of single mothers out there… They work so hard.”
–Olabisi, client at Newton Food Pantry

After visiting the pantry, Olabisi sometimes shares the food she receives with her neighbors. “I say, ‘Do you want this? Do you want that’…Everybody deserves it,” she explains.

Olabisi says that she would tell GBFB donors to “continue what you are doing. You are changing lives. You are changing lives.”