Open Hands Food Pantry & Garden
Mobile Drive-Through
1st & 3rd Saturdays 9:00 am - 10:30 am
11 Mile & Woodward Ave Royal Oak
An Important Message To Our Guests
IMPORTANT -- NEW SCHEDULE:
Open Hands will be open only on the first and third Saturdays of each month. On those days we will continue to distribute food as a drive-through pantry from 9:00am – 10:30am.
Open Hands Food Pantry will be open on the first and third Saturdays for the near future to serve guests. We have arrived at a plan for food distribution that will keep our guests and volunteers safe. Food distribution includes shelf stable groceries, fresh meat, and toiletries. Most often, we also have fresh vegetables and fruit available to distribute. Some additional personal items such as diapers and feminine hygiene products are distributed when available.
We open at 9:00am and the distribution is a drive-through method. Enter the parking lot from 11 Mile. Cars will make several stops and then will be directed to the front of the church. Volunteers will place bags in the trunk of your vehicle. Guests must remain in their vehicle through the entire process to maintain social distancing. We suggest that guests arrive with an empty trunk to ensure proper storage space. We also ask that guests and volunteers wear masks.
To those without access to a vehicle, you are welcome to ‘walk up’, while maintaining six feet of social distance.
During this time:
- There are no residential restrictions . We welcome residents of any county.
- There are no restrictions as to how often guests can come to Open Hands. You may come to Open Hands any day we are open if you are in need of food.
PLEASE NOTE: Gleaners continues to distribute emergency food at their mobile centers. Click HERE for their schedule.
Open Hands is pleased to be able to support our community!
Open Hands Garden
Sign up to volunteer at the Open Hands Garden HERE.
Ground for Open Hands Garden was broken in Spring of 2015. With continuous improvements, structural revisions/additions and many volunteer hours, the Open Hands Food Pantry now has a thriving, organic best practice garden providing fresh produce for the guests of Open Hands on a weekly basis. With infrastructure, crop plans, major garden event timing calendar, volunteer ranks established, full support from the Open Hands Board of Directors and countless people from St. John's and the surrounding community all firmly in place, the Garden can be and will be sustainable well into the future.
So what does Open Hands Garden need going forward? Having more volunteers is always nice especially people willing to fill the ranks of volunteer leader on a rotating basis. More specifically we're looking for 5 - 6 motivated volunteers who have an interest in gardening, care about the nutritional needs of our food insecure neighbors and would like to get more involved in the management and operations of the garden. This would include periodic meetings to discuss the direction the garden should proceed, early spring seedling production, prepping beds and planting in the Hoop House and outside Raised Beds, temperature regulation of the Hoop House, irrigation as required on a rotating basis, grounds maintenance, social media outreach, volunteer coordination and other tasks as the need arises. Keeping Open Hands Garden going strong is a lot of work. There's always something that can be or needs to be done. Volunteer opportunities can be found HERE.
If any of this interests you or you have knowledge of or want to learn about organic best practice gardening and have a desire to address the hunger needs of our surrounding community, please feel free to contact Dennis Spatafora at: djspatafora@comcast.net or 586-431-5527.
Open Hands Food Pantry gratefully acknowledges the support of The Village Club Foundation:
The Village Club Foundation 2021-22 Grant Recipient
Meijer Simply Give campaign benefits Open Hands
UPDATE: The Simply Give campaign supporting Open Hands has been extended through April 1, 2023!
Help feed your neighbors when you shop at Meijer-Woodward Corner Market!
Open Hands Food Pantry has joined forces with the Meijer Simply Give hunger relief program. Now through April 1, when you shop at the Woodward Corner Market located at 30955 Woodward Ave. Royal Oak, MI 48073 (13 Mile and Woodward) either in-store or online using Meijer pickup or home delivery, consider adding a Simply Give donation card to your basket. Your donation directly benefits Open Hands. In-store, the cards will be available at the check-out area.
For every $10 Simply Give donation card purchased on Double Match Days -- Saturday, March 4, and Saturday, March 25 -- Meijer will double match the contribution, meaning they will donate an additional $20. This means Open Hands will receive a total of $30 for every $10 a customer donates on those days.
Share this with your friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers because every dollar makes a difference! When we give, Meijer gives.
Check out the video, courtesy of our friends at the Woodward Corner Market, featuring our "sorting and bag packers crew"!
Click HERE to read about Open Hands and the Woodward Corner Market.
We sincerely thank our friends at Meijer for helping Open Hands feed our guests!
Gleaners Community Food Bank
Open Hands is proud to be a long-time partner agency with Gleaners Community Food Bank.
Their mission statement:
We exist to provide households with access to sufficient, nutritious food, and related resources.
We believe hunger can be solved.
Volunteer information for Gleaners Food Bank can be found HERE.
Do you shop on Amazon? If you do, you can automatically make money for Open Hands Food Pantry. Here’s how:
AmazonSmile is a program that donates 0.5% of your eligible purchases on Amazon to a charity of your choice. All you need to do is start your shopping at smile.amazon.com (it’s the same Amazon merchandise, links to your account – just type in smile.amazon.com or AmazonSmile in your browser rather than Amazon.
In order to browse or shop at AmazonSmile, customers must first select a charitable organization. At the selection screen, choose Open Hands Food Pantry, Royal Oak MI. (If you have an account with Amazon, this will be automatically saved for you for future purchases). There are really simple instructions that you can Google, or call and we’ll help you. Again, once you set this up, for eligible purchases made through AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will automatically donate 0.5% of the purchase price to Open Hands Food Pantry. The donation will be made at no extra cost to you.