Penn Hills Community Fridge program flourishing

The Penn Hills Public Library has been helping the community in more ways than one with the growth of its Community Fridge Program. This food pantry, which is inside the library on the second floor, is open and available to anyone in need and does not require a library card to participate.

The fridge and pantry contain a wide variety of both perishable and non-perishable food items, including fresh produce that’s available anytime the library is open on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The food comes to the library from Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and is ordered online by the library in advance using grant money supplied by the Food Bank. Restock days are Tuesday and Thursday and patrons are encouraged to arrive on those days, as the food goes quickly.

“We are working on a more consistent supply, because we want people to be able to access the food every day,” said library assistant Ben Nigrosh, who helps coordinate the inventory, delivery and stocking on the food each week.

Due to the immense of amount of need in the community, keeping the food in stock has been an issue, though the delivery volume available has been high. This past week, the Community Fridge received 1,600 pounds of food and has received and distributed more than 21,000 total pounds of food since the program began back in the summer of 2022.

It kicked off on July 23, 2022 with mostly dry goods on pantry shelves before moving into more produce and perishable items starting in August. From July through December of 2022, more than 800 people came through to the Community Fridge, and so far in 2023, 130 people have utilized the services.

“It’s been a whirlwind and no one really expected this much success this quickly,” Nigrosh said.

Through it all, Nigrosh and Vik Merrick, who also works at the library as a library assistant and helps maintain the Community Fridge program, have tried to keep the focus primarily on the food and on opportunity for everyone.

“It’s definitely about the food. Food is very expensive, especially with the price of eggs going up. Just on a bare bones level, it’s about access, people being able to access the resources that they need,” Nigrosh said. “We’re very happy to provide that and to use the library as a community hub to be a place where people came in and feel comfortable and to be able to use those resources.

“It’s also about showing people how much we can do with little resources when we come together as a community. This has been built almost entirely from just our time and energy. We want to highlight what we can do together and we also want to challenge the ideas that we grow up with about people who experience need and what need is supposed to look like. We want people to have a different way of looking at the prejudices that they may have around people who experience need. I think almost everyone experiences need on some level at some point.”

Merrick is focused on making a larger impact from the local level.

“It’s so great to actually help people and put effort towards a larger cause. We’re such a small part of the entire world, but we able to help the community by remaining community-based and community-focused,” Merrick said. “We want to inspire people to think about and put more effort into things like legislation and what can be done from even the smallest part at the local level. We have some things planned for the future where we hope it will inspire people to think more about food insecurity and other insecurities, and we want to inspire people to help take it into their own hands.”

Moving forward, the Nigrosh and Merrick hope to expand their ideas about access, need and community through adding book collections and inviting in speakers and writers in order to help spread their message.

“We have plans to start a book collection about food justice and mutual aid,” Nigrosh said. “We want to be able to engage people in more ways that just food distribution.”

Both Nigrosh and Merrick encourage the community to check out the Penn Hills Library Facebook page for updates about the Community Fridge program, upcoming events and calls for volunteers.