Our mission is to reduce the stress felt by Philadelphia parents struggling to feed their children.
When a parent wakes up in the morning and they do not know how they will be able to feed their children dinner that night, the whole day becomes shrouded in stress and anxiety. When you have worked 12 hours that day and get home to a toddler and a teenager splitting a packet of ramen for dinner it is easy to be overwhelmed by hopelessness, depression, and pure exhaustion. Combined with a parent’s own hunger and fatigue, tempers can become short, emotions frayed, and patience exhausted. The physical effects of hunger may result in an inability to focus on anything else, the emotional effects can be devastating to a whole family system.
The mission of the Papermill Food Hub is to reduce the stress felt by Philadelphia families by providing weekly deliveries of groceries and diapers to the family’s door. We believe that a reduction of stress in a household allows for calmer family relations, more patient and emotionally available parents, and stronger, more secure children. These changes help form more peaceful communities, break generational cycles and help assure a greater future for us all.
How it works:
Every Sunday a bag of groceries, diapers in the correct size, baby wipes, toilet paper and other essentials are delivered to the door of our city’s most vulnerable families. As integral to our services as what we distribute is how we distribute. By delivering to their door the family does not have to travel via public transportation, there is no lining up on a city block waiting for the your turn, there is no way to tell a Papermill Food Hub delivery from any other delivery a neighbor may be getting, such as Uber Eats or Doordash, so the families can accept help in privacy. And the deliveries are made every week, reliable, comforting, dependable.
The Papermill Food Hub is completely volunteer run. Our only overhead currently is the rent we pay at our distribution site. After the first year we moved out of the papermill to a nearby garage, (we kept the Papermill Food Hub name though.) On Sunday mornings, about ten volunteer drivers show up to our Martha Street hub, collect their route lists and bags and head out to do their deliveries.
Our Martha St. Location
About Our Work
The Papermill Food Hub is located in the heart of Kensington, a neighborhood struggling with the opioid epidemic, COVID-19, and rampant unemployment. Kensington is located in a “food desert”, meaning there is a lack of access to grocery stores in the area. As a result of these compounded factors, items like groceries, diapers, toilet paper, and masks are hard to access. The Papermill Food Hub is working to provide as many boxes of groceries and essential items as possible to families in need. Here are a few stats that inspire our work.
23% of Philadelphia residents live under the poverty line, the largest percentage of any major US city.
36% of American families experience diaper insecurity.
Of these families, 60% are likely to miss at least one day of school or work due to diaper insecurity.
For households making minimum wage, approximately 14% of their income will go towards purchasing diapers.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, diaper prices have increased 14% on average.
The Papermill Food Hub delivers roughly 2,000 diapers/week, at no cost to the recipients
We started this program in June 2020, delivering to twenty-one families in the neighborhood. One of our founding members has worked for years in the neighborhood providing Early Intervention to children with Autism. Calling on her co-workers, she was able to connect with families struggling the most and ask about their direst needs. Most asked for diapers for their children, especially those who tend to be slower to potty train as a result of developmental issues, and gave us their diaper sizes. Many others asked for food support, which we began providing through weekly grocery bags.
What makes the Papermill Food Hub unique is that we offer consistent weekly deliveries to families, at absolutely no cost to them. We do not want lack of transportation to be a reason that our families are not able to get the resources they need: so, each Sunday our drivers meet up at our distribution center on Martha Street to pick up their deliveries.
With your help, we hope to keep growing. If you think you are able to provide us with help, or know any other way of assisting our cause, we would deeply appreciate it and hope we can all band together to help some of our neighbors through this very tough time.
Events & Press
When we’re not actively serving our 60+ families, we’re brainstorming ideas to improve our organization.
Come meet us at one of our fundraising events or read about our local work!
Thanks to the Kensington Voice for featuring us.
Read the article here.
Thanks to the Chestnut Hill Local for stopping by grocery night!
Read the article here.
Our Partners
Thanks to our ongoing sponsors! Our work in the community wouldn’t be possible without them.
If you’d like to become a business partner, please reach out to us at papermillfoodhub@gmail.com
Follow Us!
Follow us on Instagram @papermillfoodhub to keep up with donation drives, meet volunteers, and get an exclusive look behind the scenes of all things Papermill Food Hub.
