From the beginning, food has been a way to change our lives as a community.
Our work is built on the backs of giants who have come before us. They handed down their work through the generations and inspire us to continue the same mission; to make sure that everyone in our community is fed.
“Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.”
- Dorothy Day
The Beginning
In the late 1970s, The East Side Housing Action Committee (ESHAC) partnered with the St. Casimir Parish to open a distribution site to be a resource for the underserved and undernourished of the community.
St. Casimir Parish was built by the immigrant population fleeing Poland in the 1890s. That generation was called za chlebem (for bread) because they were fleeing from starvation in search of a better life. Relatives and friends crammed together into Riverwest flats to work low-paying jobs in sewers, steel mills, blast furnaces, and meat packing plants. The grandchildren of that za chlebem generation ran Riverwest Food Pantry for decades. As children of the Great Depression they recounted to us the stories of their parents’ corner stores going into debt to make sure no one in the community starved. In that spirit they handed this work on to us.
In the early 2000’s, teachers at Gaenslen and Fratney Schools recognized hunger among school families and coordinated efforts with St. Casimir Parish and ESHAC to open a second site at Gaenslen for food distribution.
Out of this shared effort, the Riverwest Food Pantry was born.
Evolution
From 1979 to 2012, the Riverwest Food Pantry’s mission was focused on making food available to those in need. Over those years, its volunteers generously served hundreds of thousands in our community.
In 2013, the Riverwest Food Pantry became a 501(c)(3) non-profit to expand its mission, using food as a means of building community and addressing the wider challenges of health, poverty, and social isolation. People of all backgrounds gathering around food grew into a community where it became harder to tell “who was a shopper and who was a volunteer.” In addition to the food distribution initiatives, programs evolved to include a mission internship, an emphasis on healthful nutrition, food gatherings, crisis assistance and mentoring, and organic produce grown from our community gardens and hoop house farm.
Today
By 2020, the culture and initiatives of the Riverwest Food Pantry had evolved beyond the traditional pantry model. The Riverwest Food Pantry reframed this project to a new “community food center” model, envisioning an evermore holistic and relational approach to addressing hunger in Milwaukee. In 2022, it was renamed the Kinship Community Food Center to better reflect the foundational belief that all transformation starts with relationships.