Friends of Clementon Food Pantry

A friendly outdoor volunteer collects paperwork as clients remain in their vehicles or in an outdoor waiting area. Clients can also elect to be matched with Camden County services, such as mental health. Volunteers inside assemble boxes and bags based on the client’s choice, family size, composition, and needs. 

The client-choice model is built on the idea of allowing clients to choose their own food. Some client-choice pantries resemble small grocery stores, with products arrayed on shelves and in coolers/freezers, from which clients can fill boxes or bags. Others produce a list of the food they have available, and then prepare individual packages based on clients’ selections. Client-choice pantries tend to be very space-flexible, some have been successfully run out of closets, and still others thrive without using a building at all. Choosing their own food gives clients a sense of control rather than the helplessness of being told, in essence, that “this is what you get”; and since clients tend not to take food they won’t use, relatively little of a what a client-choice food pantry distributes goes to waste. The diverse and shifting inventories of Food Banks are well-suited to providing client-choice food pantries with a wide array of products to offer their clients. All told, a client-choice pantry can offer families in need in its community many times more help than a standardized food box/bag pantry with the same resources.

Everyone who serves is a volunteer and a member of the community.