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Thanks to volunteers and town officials, Phillips food pantry will open Thursday

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PHILLIPS – After the Phillips Food Pantry closed July 1, the many calls to Town Manager Lynn White for help didn’t go unanswered.

On Thursday, the food pantry that had served 40 families in Phillips, Avon and Madrid for a decade and a half will open once again in the former Phillips School for those in need. All this comes after weeks of hard work by a board of representatives from each town and more community volunteers who all decided they needed to move fast after seeing the realization of just how important the pantry is here.

The Phillips Shared Ministry, which had operated the pantry out of the basement of the Phillips Methodist Church on Main Street, announced it had to close on July 1 after its volunteer coordinator Madeline Haines resigned and there were too few volunteers to keep it going.

The United Methodist Economic Ministry in Salem, 8 miles away, has offered to provide food for the Phillips area clients since the pantry closed.

That’s when the calls started coming in to Phillips Town Manager Lynn White.

“We heard from a lot of people, many of whom had walked to the food pantry but didn’t have the means to get to Salem,” White said. He, along with Avon Selectman Bob Ellis, established a four-member board of representatives and 15 volunteers to begin the work of reopening the food pantry.

It was decided that the pantry could be immediately housed in a section of the former Phillips School on Russell Street, just off Main Street. The school building is also where the town office will be moving to after the renovation work, such as the offices, communication system, electrical wiring and new heating system can be completed.

The town has set aside $39,000 to renovate the old school into a town office, so White said, opening the pantry in the same building as the town office “is a two for one deal.”  This year, Phillips voters appropriated $2,700 for the pantry’s expenses and Avon voters approved spending $1,600 for its share of the request for food pantry funding.


Voters at Phillips town meeting held on July 12, approved spending $2,700 for the food pantry, which will reopen Thursday in the old Phillips School.

To get the food pantry up and running right away, volunteers have spent a considerable amount of time cleaning out a classroom and hallway in preparation for the nonperishable food storage. The storage space used for the food has to be very clean and compliant with food safety standards. to meet those standards, the space  needed new electrical wiring and switches and provided with heat to keep the food from freezing when winter’s cold arrives. 

“Cleaning it up was a monstrous job,” White said. Volunteers scrubbed the space down, the renovations to the space have been completed and whatever leftover nonperishable food at the church basement has been moved to the old school. Opening day is Thursday.    

“We, as a town, felt it was a much-needed service,” White said. “We’re here to serve,” he added.

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