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Pantry Plus and their Plus's

Peninsula City Church is a Pentecostal Church in Frankston, which prides itself in assisting the local community. One of the keyways it does this is through its Pantry Plus Program. Pantry Plus was launched in 2014 by Katharine Goschnick and operates from the Church Care House every Tuesday from 10:00am-1:45pm.

Katherine says the aim of Pantry Plus is to provide food for under-resourced people in the community. She goes on to say, “… but not just to provide food, it’s to provide, uh, relational contexts with our volunteers and our Pantry Plus community”.

Pantry Plus is different to other organisations because of their Plus aspect. This involves providing material goods to those in need as well as community through the Church.

If someone wants to attend the Pantry, they must book an appointment through the Church office. With this appointment, they then receive a one-on-one meeting with a Pantry Plus volunteer where they discuss the client’s situation and how the Pantry might be able to help them. The volunteer then takes the client through the Pantry and helps them collect the goods they may need for the coming week.

Katharine believes this is where they are different, because they intentionally spend time with their clients. She believes that many other organisations are just wanting to get as many people through their doors as they can, and so they do not invest in that quality one-on-one time with their guests, whereas Pantry Plus highly values forming relationships with the people that attend.

A few clients were asked what they like about Pantry Plus, and they had only positive things to say about it. Client Daniel Claw* stated, “I like it that we get food, so you don’t have to go without; so instead of starving you actually have food in your stomach. And, the people here are absolutely brilliant.” Another client, Clara Silver*, went on to add, “I like it because it helps me to provide better meals for my children.”

Pantry Plus is an excellent program within the Frankston community. Katharine believes that they are different because they make sure they form personal relationships with their guests. Pantry Plus makes sure that everyone has a place to go where they can feel a sense of belonging.

NOTE: Daniel Claw and Clara Silver are fake names, written to protect their privacy.

NOTE 2: This is a script for an 80 second video story I wrote for my university unit News Reporting 2

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