Rebecca Dunnigan, left, outreach and program manager for the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry, gets help from Naperville's Stacy DiBernardo Thursday during a mobile pantry distribution event in Aurora that focused on helping women. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

Lupe Hernandez of Aurora was searching the internet and found something happening Thursday in Aurora that would definitely help her out.

“I don’t have any small children but there are three adults living with me and two have disabilities,” Hernandez said at the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry’s giveaway event for women at Family Focus at 550 Second Ave. in Aurora. “I’m going to need some products for women and since this is my first time here I want to see what else they have.”

The event, which did not require either registration or identification, featured a variety of items including frozen meat, baby food and formula as well as consumer products like diapers, baby wipes, laundry detergent, feminine hygiene products and more.

The pantry has been offering a mobile distribution event focused on women for a year. Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry Executive Director Shannon Cameron said the program has been funded by the Aurora Women’s Empowerment Foundation and that Thursday’s giveaway was the 13th offered by the food pantry.

“We’ve had one of these a month and we know that we have served a lot of women and families in this time,” Cameron said. “We don’t like calling it ‘women only.’ It’s definitely directed towards women, but if fathers show up with young children who are picking up for women that can’t be there we don’t turn them away. It’s about helping people to get certain products and things that aren’t included with some services.”

Rebecca Dunnigan, pantry outreach and program manager, said to date the program has served 928 families and that unlike most drive-thru giveaways, people at the event queue up in line and select what they need.

“We have volunteers staged along the way as people (go) through and people get to choose items. That’s part of the empowerment part of this – it allows families to come through and chose items that they need, not just give them items that we think they need,” Dunnigan said. “Our donations are about as large as they have been in the past, but it is getting very difficult and exhausting to have those items for the families.”

Stacy DiBernardo of Naperville was one of the volunteers representing Calvary Church at the event who said she has “been part of every single one of them.”

“It’s powerful to do this and it blesses us, and you see a lot of mothers and a lot of single women,” she said. “A lot of tears are shed because people can come here and actually find things that others take for granted.”

Hernandez said she was grateful to find the pantry after coming from another earlier in the day.

“I lost my job a few years ago due to a disability and I’ve had 11 surgeries and it’s been very difficult as I had a full income,” she said. “To get food and others items, it’s been important.”

Unlike Hernandez who used the internet, Isadra Loera of Aurora said she found the pop-up food pantry event simply by driving by. She said she came for food and also needed supplies for five children.

“The children are 3, 7, 10, 12 and 14 and this is my first time,” she said. “I was just driving by and I saw the sign.”

Viola Carlton of Aurora said she has been coming to the event nearly every month since it is close by and that she “comes for the people I stay with.”

“The people I stay with have a couple of 14-year-old girls that just had babies and so I come and get diapers and the food for them and a few things for myself,” she explained. “I’m just a friend and I go to a lot of pantries for them. It’s just my nature to do this.”

Cameron said the program’s future is yet to be determined given that funding has run out and that the food pantry will have to look at ways of funding it in the coming year.

“The pop-up pantries that we run, all of that has to be purchased or purely donated food from the community so they are quite costly for us to run, but it’s important to us that we’re bringing food out to the people and breaking down barriers for people to accessing these foods and products,” Cameron said. “It’s important to keep these projects going but it’s more of a challenge these days. We just have less food on our shelves. As inflation goes up we can’t just get access to the food we once had.”

Cameron said she knows the program “means a lot to mothers and families” and that with private funding ending, “now we’re self-funding it and we’ll be looking for additional funding.”

“We’re not sure at this point how long we can self-sustain it,” she said.

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.