KENT COUNTY, Mich. — United Church Outreach Ministry, or UCOM, is not new to Kent County, but the faith-based organization continues to expand its operation.
“UCOM is 36 years old this year,” executive director Bruce Roller said. “It started in 1985 from a church pantry and incorporated and has grown now to be a community-wide agency that's doing a whole lot more work and has a whole lot more space to do that work.”
In addition to providing food and other essential items to the community, UCOM offers educational assistance to meet basic needs, improve quality of life, and promote self-sufficiency.
“We call it Eat Healthy Live Healthy, a program that several of the pantries are involved in,” Roller said. “We are doing just a whole lot of fresh fruit, fresh local food, an assortment of gardens, 4x4 gardens in people's yards with a support group for them to come together and have a discussion about what makes their gardens grow. We have 13 plots and community gardens in the city, so lots of ideas around sustainable, affordable, accessible food for everybody.”
He said everyone at UCOM believes access to healthy food is a basic human right, and that’s why they’re making sure everyone has easy access, while also teaching people how to grow their own food.
“Tackling the root cause of poverty, hunger, and food insecurity is as important at least as getting food on the table for folks who need it right now,” Roller said. “There's a huge educational portion. In fact, that's the second part of our mission. We provide basic material leads and educational support, and we're doing lots of educational support around food nutrition, cooking, exercising, preservation of foods, just a big broad swath of helping people get to a point where they can be secure on their own, that they can have the food on the table that they need for right now, and that we offer a lot of options so people can move on deeper into self-support.”
One of the things Roller said he’s proud of is how the local community responded to the need during COVID-19.
“Those big long lines that we saw on the national news in big cities, those horrible lines of people waiting for hours to be able to get emergency food that they needed, you did not see that happening in Kent County,” he said. “And that's because we have a really good network of pantries, large pantries and small pantries, all working together year-round all the time for whoever needs them. So whenever there is an emergency, it doesn't stretch all of us beyond our capacity.”
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