Most of the volunteers at the Corinthian Hunger Center are in their 70s, but they don’t mind doing the heavy lifting when it comes to helping Cleveland families who can’t afford enough food.
Charlie Brown, who gives his age as “79 in July,” has volunteered weekly at the food pantry, located at Inner-City Missionary Baptist Church on East 55th Street, since it opened 21 years ago. His duties include helping to unload the Hunger Network’s food truck and placing the delivery on a conveyor device that takes the items to the church’s basement. There, he helps place them on a hand truck and moves them to tables where the bulk food is unpacked. Last Tuesday it included cases of canned goods, large sacks of potatoes and commercial size boxes of frozen chicken.
“They’ll be 50 pounds, 60 pounds, sometimes 80 pounds and we lift them,” he said, adding that a couple of younger men from the neighborhood often help the septuagenarians unload the truck. “It’s really hard work, but I feel God gave us a mission to help the people in the community.”
I feel that I’m doing something that God wants me to do. If I can help somebody, that’s a blessing to me too.”
Deacon Johnny Collins on why he has volunteered at the Corinthian Hunger Center for 21 years.
Volunteers such as these are also figuratively doing the heavy lifting to keep the food pantry system operational. Most pantries are exclusively run by volunteers, who are almost always older adults, said Emma Messett, the Hunger Network’s hunger relief program director, who works closely with the pantries. Many are no longer able to volunteer for health reasons, and a few pantry managers have passed away in the last two years, she said. Finding new volunteers, especially from younger generations, has proven difficult, often leaving the work to be spread among fewer volunteers, she said.
And the work is increasing as the need for food assistance grows. The Hunger Network saw more than a 60% increase in the number of individuals served at its pantries between 2021 and 2025, according to numbers supplied by the nonprofit. This year appears to be on track to at least meet last year’s number of 593,038.
Would paying a stipend get more people to volunteer at food pantries?
Most food pantries have primarily relied on volunteers, but it may be time to offer people money for their efforts, Messett and the Corinthian Hunger Center volunteers said.
Two issues will likely force the change: growing need and what Messett describes as a “cliff” that will come in the next several years as more seniors stop volunteering for health and other reasons.
“Offering a stipend would be a huge, huge help,” she said. “Ultimately, compensation of a living wage would be the best solution.”
For now, the latter seems unlikely.
“Because of federal funding cuts and future uncertainties, the Hunger Network has been able to provide less support in recent years not only for food purchasing power, but also for overhead costs such as utilities to run the many refrigerators and freezers needed for operations,” Messett wrote in an email to Signal Cleveland.
Signal Cleveland asked Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration and that of County Executive Chris Ronayne about the feasibility of providing stipends to get more people to help at food pantries.
Ronayne’s office emailed a statement that didn’t address stipends but hinted that the county was open to discussing new options.
“Cuyahoga County is committed to addressing food insecurity in our community with financial support to the Hunger Network, Cleveland Foodbank and through efforts like our Hunger Response Team,” the email states. “We continue to have productive conversations with all of our partners about the best way to fight hunger in our county and support the generosity of community members who give their time and dollars to help their neighbors.”
Cleveland is committed to “doing what we can to ensure no family is left hungry,” Tyler Sinclair, the city’s spokesman, wrote in an email to Signal Cleveland. This has included raising more than $600,000 for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank to help residents who lost SNAP benefits. It also could potentially include stipends for Hunger Network volunteers.
“We’ll continue supporting organizations that are ingrained in this work – who then have the ability to decide how to best operate their own budgets, with the option for many organizations to create a stipend-based system that could lead to an increased number of volunteers at their locations,” Sinclair wrote.
More Cleveland area residents rely on food pantries as the volunteers running them age
In the last year or so, more new faces are seeking food at the Corinthian Hunger Center, said pantry manager Yvonne Somerville. When she’s in the basement overseeing the distribution of food, it’s not uncommon for the volunteers to call down to her to prepare more grocery bags.
Providing food to those in need has kept her volunteering for 13 years.
“We were put on this earth to help one another, love one another,” said Somerville, 76.
The St. Clair-Superior, Hough and Goodrich-Kirtland neighborhoods the pantry serves all have high poverty rates. In addition to overseeing the operation, Somerville usually packs several dozen grocery bags by herself because there aren’t more volunteers. Last fall, she called the handful of regular volunteers, all members of the church, together. She told them after two decades of running the pantry twice a week, they would have to eliminate the Thursday operation.
“It was getting to be a little bit too much,” Somerville told them. “And I added, ‘Well, you know, we are all senior citizens.’”
Not one volunteer objected.
The pantry continues to serve about 300 households a month, she said. Many recipients were able to switch to Tuesday, and the increased demand made up for those who weren’t. Still, Somerville felt a little guilty about losing a day. That was until she mentioned it to other pantry managers at a meeting.
“They said, ‘You’re doing good,’” She said. “We only do it twice a month or once a month.”
Several factors have forced people to food pantries, including those who haven’t used them in the past. These include rising rents, limited affordable housing and high inflation. Consumer prices in the Midwest rose 4.1% for the 12-month period ending in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is about double the 2% target the Federal Reserve Bank sets for inflation. The number of people receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in Cuyahoga County dropped by more than 11,000, or nearly 6%, in the last six months. Local government officials say reasons for the decrease include the new federal work requirement to receive SNAP. Many of these former recipients are turning to food pantries, volunteers said.
When the food pantry system started decades ago, being a primarily volunteer operation was feasible. In addition to retirees, food pantries could rely on stay-at-home moms, who were much more plentiful then. Many of the churches that started the food pantries, often in the neighborhoods now with the greatest need for them, used to have considerably larger congregations. The memberships of many of these congregations have dwindled as many in younger generations have opted out of attending church.
More importantly, food pantries decades ago didn’t have the major safety net status that they have today. In an era before the proliferation of low-wage jobs and the loss of good-paying blue-collar jobs with benefits, people tended to rely on pantries on a more temporary basis, she said.
“They were known as emergency food pantries,” Messett said. “It was a one off. Someone had a fire or lost their job. It was a fixable situation. Now, wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. So, people are using them month after month to feed their families.
“That’s not an emergency situation,” she said. “That’s sustenance feeding.”
Phyllis McNair has been going to the Corinthian Hunger Center for years. She likes that it is close to home. Last Tuesday she loaded her folding shopping cart with the two full bags of groceries she received and walked home. She remembers when the Corinthian Hunger Center had many more volunteers. McNair remembers when other churches in the area had food pantries that have since closed. She fears the day that none will be left in the neighborhood.
“I need them with all these high prices,” she said. “I just got to walk with faith. I can’t let it get me down thinking about this.”
Money could help attract people to the demanding work of the food pantry
The Corinthian Hunger Center volunteers believe that offering a stipend could draw and keep volunteers. Brown and Johnny Collins, a longtime volunteer who is a deacon at the church, said volunteers come but usually don’t stay. Younger generations often have different values, they said. Both come from a time in Cleveland when physical labor and good-paying jobs were often intertwined. Brown is a retired autoworker, and Collins worked in a foundry.
“Hard work doesn’t bother me,” Collins, 75, said. “That’s all I’ve been doing all of my life.”
Brown said many of the younger volunteers didn’t like physical labor.
“Young people today, they help for a few minutes, then all of a sudden they’ll quit,” he said. “And it’s frustrating sometimes, but we just keep on going. They’re used to sitting down, looking at their phone or whatever.”
A stipend could be enough of an incentive for volunteers to stay, Collins said. The satisfaction that comes with giving back to make your community a better place often doesn’t hold sway, he said.
“I feel that I’m doing something that God wants me to do,” the deacon said. “If I can help somebody, that’s a blessing to me too.”
Seeing that they were short on volunteers – as they always are – Messant decided to pitch in. This included moving four boxes of chicken that each weighed 40 pounds.
“Our volunteers are doing that every single week,” she said. “My back is screaming, and I’m not even 30 yet.”
Corinthian Hunger Center is committed to a mission of helping people
James and Davita Brownlee were among the new families in line last Tuesday at the Corinthian Hunger Center. The couple never thought they would be there. After James lost his job in January, the family of five was forced to rely on food pantries. A few months of unemployment coupled with inflation led to the family running out of money. They unexpectedly had to go to pantries twice in a month.
“This is a humbling experience,” Davita Brownlee said. “My husband is the type of man who believes in taking care of his family.”
James Brownlee is hoping his family will only have to temporarily rely on food pantries. He is about to start a job as a floor technician.
“It’s important that we could get this help,” he said. “I’m not a lazy man. I may sit down for a minute, but I get back up and do what I need to do.”
Learning of the family’s plight reminded volunteer John Brown, 76, of why his late brother started the food pantry. (He and volunteer Charlie Brown are also brothers.)
Pastor Roosevelt Brown started the Corinthian Hunger Center in 2005. It was about two years before the Great Recession began, but already many in the area were dealing with the foreclosures and layoffs that would come to characterize the historic economic downturn.
(Roosevelt Brown initially led Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church, which merged with Enoree Missionary Baptist Church in 2016 to become Inner-City Missionary Baptist Church. The new congregation decided to keep the pantry’s name.)
The late pastor didn’t like to see people in need, especially if he believed there was a way for the church to help, John Brown said. He said these were values instilled in them in small town Gloster, Mississippi, where they were raised.
“We were always trying to lend a helping hand,” he said. “Whenever someone was down and out, we would all flock together and go help them.”
John Brown said such values may be less common today, but he believes they still exist. He hasn’t lost hope that more volunteers will join his and other food pantries that need them.
“I have faith that there are at least a few out there that are going to want to help,” he said. “They will come through, just on their own time.”
