“It's a Mini Celebration”: Meet the Volunteers That Make Marshall’s UCAP Food Shelf a Welcoming Place

Marshall, a town of around 14,000 in southwest Minnesota, is the kind of place where you get to know your neighbors. It’s not out of the ordinary to stop on the street or in a store to chat. And sometimes, that neighbor is the friendly volunteer you met through the UCAP Kitchen Table Food Shelf, like Kim, Terri, Kathy, Lloyd, Angie, and Steve.  

UCAP Marshall volunteers Kathy, Lloyd, Steve, Angie, and Kim.

United Community Action Partnership, or UCAP, is a Second Harvest Heartland food shelf partner that serves neighbors in 13 counties in southwestern Minnesota. Food and Nutrition Manager Nicole Knobloch explained that UCAP is much more than a food shelf though, as they provide a variety of services for the families who visit, including energy and housing assistance. “So, when a family comes in, we aren't just focusing on food.” 

Kim recently moved to Marshall and started volunteering to meet people.

Kim, a volunteer who helps food shelf visitors shop, says she’s heard from neighbors visiting the food shelf about the challenges in their lives that have brought them to the food shelf. But she also sees that, for many visitors, the food shelf is a welcoming, social space. “I get the feeling for a lot of them it's almost a social interaction, to come here and see other people,” she said. “It's kind of a mini celebration.” 

Terri is a brand-new volunteer at the food shelf, but she says she can already easily say that volunteers, staff, and shoppers are all glad to be here and thankful. “You see just all different kinds of people. All different ages. All different size of families. It's been very busy. It’s a very needed thing,” she said. 

Kathy regularly helps shoppers find what they need in the food shelf.

A regular volunteer of over eight years, Kathy, says some of the most popular items are the convenience foods that are easy to pack in a work lunch and household staples like oil, peanut butter, or syrup. She also notes that beans and masa flour are popular items among their Spanish-speaking visitors.  

The food shelf also provides items that help break down barriers to the food—like can openers. “One person said that he was homeless, and so we were doing vegetables in cans, and he said, ‘but I don't even have a can opener,’” said Kathy. “And so we started stocking a few extra can openers in a cupboard so that they would be able to open their cans of vegetables.” 

Kathy’s husband Lloyd is also a regular volunteer at the food shelf, despite being vision impaired. Stacy, the food shelf’s coordinator, will have a task set up for Lloyd on the mornings he volunteers, most of which includes breaking down bulk items into smaller containers, like flats of bottled water or family-sized boxes of instant oatmeal. “I have the best people to work with in the backroom,” said Lloyd. “They’re all nice. Because I can't see, I'm slow, and nobody ever complains.” 

Angie started volunteering at the food shelf in 1997.

Angie, a visitor intake volunteer, has been serving the community at the food shelf for 27 years. She remembers, at a previous location, the Second Harvest Heartland truck would need to park and unload on Main Street and the food would then need to be hauled around the building to get it in the food shelf. “But then we moved out here and it’s going well,” she said. “It’s quite a change, with a walk-in cooler and walk-in freezer. That's been a godsend.” 

Steve enjoys using his Spanish to help shoppers.

Steve, a volunteer at the food shelf for the past ten years, helps with picking up retail food rescue and stocking the shelves. He says he feels it’s surprising how much they’ve seen their visits increase in the past couple years. “There was a time, during the pandemic, when people got extra benefits,” explained Steve. “Our low was [serving] three families in an afternoon. Now our high is 61 families in an afternoon. Yesterday there were 34 families and in the past that would have been a big day. Now that's average—probably below average right now the way things are.” 

Steve gets a great deal of satisfaction from serving at the food shelf. “It's like the old story of 1,000 starfish on a beach,” said Steve. “There are two guys walking along the beach. One guy picks up a starfish, throws it in [the ocean]. ‘What are you doing? There's a thousand of them,’ says his friend. ‘Well, I made a difference for that starfish.’ So, that's the reason why you come back.”