Tommy’s Pantry aspires to help alleviate food insecurity and provide health, hygiene and cleaning product items not covered by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP-EBT) to ensure a basic level of dignity for all people in need within the Greater Takoma Park/Silver Spring community.
Tommy’s Pantry, initially called the Takoma Park Middle School Cluster Food Support Program, was established in March of 2020 as an offshoot of the Takoma Park Middle School Pantry during the height of the Cover-19 crisis to help alleviate food insecurity for families in the community who were affected by the sudden closure of schools and businesses. Though we started by distributing shelf-stable food, we have expanded to also offer fresh produce and wellness boxes containing basic health, hygiene and cleaning supplies not covered by SNAP such as soap, deodorant, toothpaste, period products, detergent, etc. items we all use to maintain our basic human dignity. Our first distribution of the wellness boxes was January 30, 2021 in honor of Tommy Raskin on what would have been his 26th birthday. Tommy passed away one month before and because of the beautiful memorial his parents wrote about him, we decided he was the perfect person to name our pantry after. While the pandemic has abated, we have found that the lines of cars waiting to receive our boxes has never decreased. We now know that the blight of food insecurity has been in this community all along. We will continue our work as long as there are people who need us. Please visit our website for more information www.tommyspantry.org
