Food pantry site manager Kim Boughton works hard to ensure that food security comes with respect
“I was really judgmental before I started here,” admits Kim Boughton of Boscobel, Wisconsin. Kim is the site manager for Community Treasures Thrift store and Northern Grant County Food Pantry in Boscobel, a community with a population of about 3300. She is honest about her early perceptions of people that visited food pantries. She believed, she says, “All the stereotypes, they’re this, or they’re that.”
Kim started volunteering in late 2013, when it was “just something to do at that point.” She had left her job at Land’s End where she had been in customer service for 18 years and then had worked in market research.
“I had left Land’s End shortly after Sears took over, and I was helping my husband with his repair shop, doing his books.” She took a part time job at Gatherings Gift Shop in Boscobel. “Sometimes it was one day a week, sometimes five days a week, but I had a lot of time on my hands, so I would come out here and volunteer.”
She began to learn about the difficulties in making a living when her own children started getting married and having families of their own. Kim explains, “I was realizing how hard it is for people to make ends meet.”
“She had been eating out of a sleeve of crackers for three days, and she had them in her pocket.
And I couldn’t even fathom that.”
An eye-opening experience
Still, it took a conversation with an unexpected visitor to really make an impression.
“I look back to that day,” she says. “A lady came in and she had beautiful silver hair, and she had on a long red coat. She was very elderly and she reminded me so much of my grandma, and had the same type of shoes, and she had a dress on in the winter. And she whispered to me if I had a can of soup.”
Kim started talking to the woman. “She had been eating out of a sleeve of crackers for three days, and she had them in her pocket. And I couldn’t even fathom that. And I was like, yes, we’re going to get you more food.”
“She said, ‘oh, no, no, no, honey, just a couple of cans of soup.'”
The woman was in a health insurance “donut hole” – a coverage gap – where she had reached a limit on what her insurance was going to pay for prescription medications. Because of that, the woman wasn’t able to pay for her medicine and also have enough money to buy food.
Kim relates, “It was so eye-opening to see someone like my grandma. She was a very proud lady, and just to realize [my belief in] the stereotype that people are misusing the system.”
Now, Kim says, “Sure, is it possible that there are some that might appear to misuse the program, just like every other program out there? We need to remember that we don’t know everything about everyone, and even if we did, who are we to judge them? They come to us for assistance and we choose to be here to provide it.”
Kim was asked to take over as site manager in late 2014, and she says, “I dove into it.” Coming off her years in customer service at Land’s End, she had also worked as a CNA and was an EMT for about 20 years. “I’ve always kind of been in service – that’s always where my passion is, I guess.”
Currently, she says, “We serve 200 to 250 households, and if you count all the people, we have over 1500 people. That’s just the clients I have in the database. But every morning, especially Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have an average of 40 people out front, because on Wednesdays and Fridays I get to pick up Walmart produce that is just about done. It’s still got a few more days left in it, so I can put that out front. Most of the people are seniors that are out here, and they can come in and get two or three oranges, or two or three apples, or grab a couple of potatoes. They don’t want a whole bag of potatoes, they just want a couple. And they know how to use it.”
All walks of life
The households she serves have people of varied ages and backgrounds. “A lot of them are seniors, and then there’s a lot of grandparents taking care of their grandkids now.” She says that the average household size has grown in recent years. “Households used to be one and two, and when we make up our boxes now, it’s four, five and up. That’s our standard number. The families – we really notice this a lot – a lot of the families are blended, like she’s got two kids and he’s got two, now we have a family of six and it’s huge. And we’ve found that even with a dual income, it’s not enough to feed all of them. It’s not uncommon for them to fall into the guidelines.”
Most of her clients are children, and adults aged 18-55, and about a quarter of them are seniors. “They just need it. They can’t make ends meet. And now with the economy, everything is so much more expensive.” She says simply, “These are people who are down on their luck and we’re here to help them.”
“I take blood pressure medicine. It doesn’t fix my blood pressure, it just controls it. So, maybe if I got off my butt and exercise and eat better, my blood pressure would come down. So I’m dependent on my pills.
Does that make me a bad person or somehow less than the guy next door? I don’t think so.
We all have stuff. We all have something.”
Kim also acknowledges that there is some dependency, but the underlying issues are varied and complicated.
“Most of [my clients] have a medical condition, [many] are disabled in one way or another. So can they hold a job? You’d say they could, but unfortunately a lot of people are not going to hire these people. They maybe aren’t the best candidates for a lot of jobs in this area. So there is a dependency of course.”
She adds, “But the flip side to me is, aren’t we all dependent on something? I take blood pressure medicine. It doesn’t fix my blood pressure, it just controls it. So, maybe if I got off my butt and exercise and eat better, my blood pressure would come down. So I’m dependent on my pills. Does that make me a bad person or somehow less than the guy next door? I don’t think so. We all have stuff. We all have something.”
Drawing on a personal life event, when she had separated from her husband years ago, Kim shares that she had to go on medical assistance. “My daughter was little, and I had to take her to the doctor. I was bawling, handing them that card. I got so humiliated and embarrassed, because oh my gosh, look where I am. You never think you’re going to be there, and here you are.”
She is determined that her clients’ food insecurity issues will not stand in the way of being treated humanely and with respect.
“I can guarantee at some point in your life, you wondered about things. Maybe it wasn’t a meal, but you wondered about something.”
“There are so many things that need work. And no, we can’t tackle all of them, so for us, it is to make these people feel better and be happy as much as they can be. Because they have whatever issue, they can’t provide food, and that doesn’t make them ‘less than’ and I think that’s a really big thing. And people need to be educated to understand that.”
Kim says that in addition to supplying food, she and her volunteer staff also provide help and follow-through with their clients’ other needs, including finding energy assistance, gas money, and rent, among other challenges.
“If we can’t help them,” says Kim, “we do our best to find someone who can. I like to think that besides the basic food, we help give what they need, physically and emotionally, to walk out of here and hopefully feeling a little better than when they entered.”
Reflecting on her own experience, Kim states, “They fell on some bad times. Stuff happened, and stuff can happen to any one of us. Maybe your life is rosy and great, but I can guarantee at some point in your life, you wondered about things. Maybe it wasn’t a meal, but you wondered about something.”
