It鈥檚 six in the afternoon and Rachel Niyonsaba is packing two dozen bags with food in the back corner of a church basement.
鈥淚 started with some fresh zucchinis, some green peppers, red onions. We have some peanut flour,鈥� Niyonsaba said.
The pantry is lined with wooden shelves built by Niyonsaba鈥檚 colleagues, stocked with emergency food staples like bread and cereal. Each bag Niyonsaba packs will end up with about $100 worth of groceries, and around 20 families will pick them up the next day.
鈥淭hey're coming from all walks of lives from East Africa and West from Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America,鈥� Niyonsaba said.
Those culinary traditions vary, so Niyonsaba and her colleagues at the pack the bags with food that鈥檚 common across the cultures. The nonprofit operates under the umbrella of the in West Dayton. It connects refugees and immigrants with community resources, including food.
Studies show are at a higher risk of food insecurity. The reasons are many: language barriers, a lack of transportation, income instability due to few employment opportunities. Some refugees might not be eligible for SNAP benefits at first, either.
So they rely on traditional food pantries like the one at the McKinley Church. It opened in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic for anyone who needed it in the community. But the food typically on offer might not be the food immigrant families are used to cooking or eating, Niyonsaba said.
鈥淎 lot of them would be thankful that they received food. But at the same time, they just were like, 鈥業 don't know what to make this with. I'm not familiar with the taste. I don't know what's going on,鈥欌�� Niyonsaba said.
So The Equity Center began offering cultural-specific foodstuffs in August after they got a grant from the Dayton Foundation and the Dayton Foodbank. The group is still in the pilot phase.
A growing idea
While the idea isn鈥檛 necessarily new, it can be hard to pull off, Carrie Harshbarger, director of special programs at the Ohio Association of Food Banks, said.
鈥淧articularly when we're talking about culturally appropriate foods, you know, these can be things that are challenging to source, to source domestically, let alone locally.鈥� Harshbarger said.
Dayton isn鈥檛 the only Ohio community with this sort of program. In Northeast Ohio the started offering a similar service for Middle-East, South Asian and Latino immigrants, and a food bank in Lorain runs another one.
They鈥檝e done that in part with funding from the 鈥� which launched late last year. It鈥檚 a partnership between the state's department of agriculture and the association of food banks that allows the agency to purchase produce or meat from smaller, historically underrepresented regional producers.
Katie Carver, vice president at the Akron regional food bank, said supply chain logistics and language barriers can sometimes pose a challenge for these types of services. Still, she said it鈥檚 becoming a more common service across Ohio.
鈥淭here's more visibility to the strength that they [immigrants] bring to the community. And we want to care for everyone that lives in our community,鈥� Carver said. 鈥淲e want to make sure that we're providing nutritious food and food that people want and that they will eat.鈥�
Increased need
Culturally relevant food pantries come at a time when food banks are seeing .
鈥淲hen people are going through so much already, giving them a reminder of home and foods that are familiar to them is just providing the dignity that I think every human deserves to have.鈥� Harshbarger said.
Back at the church basement, it鈥檚 distribution day. The basement is busy with workers and volunteers helping people fill out paperwork or carrying bags and carts of food out to their cars.
One of the people stopping by is Mignonne Abagirinka. She鈥檚 from Central Africa. Taking a peek at the contents of her bag, she points out the cassava flour and plantain 鈥� ingredients for a classic African dish.
鈥淵ou see, I have fufu here. You cook it with vegetables you can make soup with. It鈥檚 really good,鈥� Abagirinka said.
Though it's not the same, Abagirinka said she鈥檒l eat American food, because buying imported foods from international markets isn鈥檛 cheap.
鈥淓specially when you are a single mom like me and you have to work, take care of yourself, your bills,鈥� Abagirinka said.
She said she always cooked with her mom and her aunties. And continuing that tradition here is a way to hold on to those memories.
鈥淲e used to cook beans. It's like culture. You have to eat every meal with beans, fufu. It's like everyday food for me. And when I don't have it, I didn't eat.鈥� Abagirinka said.
