2021 Crown Communities Award winner: City of Aurora, Ill. Pop-up Food Pantries

With 200,000 residents, the City of Aurora is the second-largest city in Illinois, and boasts a diverse community—43 percent Hispanic, 37 percent White, 10 percent Black and 7 percent Asian. It also has about 28,000 residents (14 percent) that have incomes below the Federal poverty level that qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Like many cities across the country, Aurora found that number growing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Restaurants, theaters, stores, offices and other businesses either closed, cut back on their hours, or reduced the number of people who could enter in order to combat the spread of COVID. As these businesses cut back on hours, they also cut back on staff, which hit residents already struggling to put food on the table even harder.

According to the City, Aurora’s two largest food pantries saw skyrocketing demand in 2020. The Aurora Interfaith Food Pantry reported a 70-percent increase in families served over 2019, and the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry served more than 1.1 million meals to guests in 2020—300,000-plus more meals than in 2019.

With the rising demand for food assistance in Aurora, Mayor Richard C. Irvin and his office stepped in to help. The City worked with the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry and the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which stocks food pantries throughout the region, to set up a monthly Pop-Up Food Pantry to make it easier for residents to feed their families during the pandemic, which has been chosen as a winner of American City & County’s 2021 Crown Communities award.

Food supplies for the Pop-Up Food Pantries were provided by the Northern Illinois Food Bank through a 2020 Coronavirus Food Assistance Program grant. Other volunteers partnering with the City of Aurora on the Pop-Up Pantry project include the Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry, the Aurora Interfaith Food Pantry, African American Men of Unity, Quad County Urban League, Aurora Housing Authority, Top Box Foods, American Diabetes Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, several Aurora churches and other local organizations and businesses.

“Food insecurity has been a major concern throughout the pandemic, and we’ve collaborated with our partners to provide meals to more than 13,000 families this past year,” Mayor Irvin said. “Our hope is the pop-up pantries eased financial burdens and relieved some food insecurity in our community by putting fresh food on the table for free.”

The monthly Pop-Up Food Pantries originally ran from May to December 2020, and then picked up again in March 2021. The drive-through pantry was set up along a road running through Phillips Park on the southeast side of Aurora, and this mile-long path allowed the City to serve 1,000 Aurora families in need per event, providing food boxes that included meat, dairy and produce. The monthly food program concluded in December 2021 and is now handled through local food pantries. Between 2020 and 2021, the program was able to help an estimated 46,000 residents.