How a Bloomington Girl Scout troop fed thousands

Rowan Ramsey first learned about food insecurity when she was 12.  

She was sitting in her school cafeteria at Edgewood Junior High School when a friend asked if she could eat her leftovers from lunch.  

It struck Ramsey as odd that anyone would want more of her school’s cafeteria food. But her mother, Cindy Chavez, told her not everyone knows where they are going to get their next meal from. 

So, Ramsey told her mom they should start a food pantry. She remembered thinking, "Everyone should have food.”  

Ramsey, a member of Ellettsville Girl Scout troop 69-279, was brainstorming ideas for a community service project to earn the national Silver Award, one of the highest Girl Scout awards given to Cadettes who create a project leading to lasting change in the community.  

She never thought it would feed thousands of people.  

"We brought it up to the Girl Scouts, and the Girl Scouts were all gung-ho about it,” Ramsey, now 24, said. 

After that, Chavez and the 10 Girl Scouts in her troop got to work.  

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Chavez said finding a location to open the food pantry was challenging — many people doubted the Girl Scout troop would successfully open it.  

However, one of the girls’ families went to Trinity Lutheran Church, so they struck a deal. The girls could use the location on 501 E. Temperance St. if they cleaned up trash from the bus bay.  

“(That was) one of the things the girls actually did without arguing and were fast and good at it,” Chavez said.  

After around two years of research and preparation, Pantry 279 opened Nov. 2, 2015, in the bus bay of Trinity Lutheran Church.  

When the pantry first opened, Ramsey said she remembers only three people coming in. 

“I was like, ‘Mom, why are we helping? There’s nobody here,’” she said. “But then it grew immensely, extraordinarily fast once the word actually got out.” 

Ramsey still occasionally works at Pantry 279 alongside her mother, Chavez, who is the executive director.  

Chavez’s first instinct was to say no to her daughter’s ambitious idea of starting a food pantry. She knew it could be a time-consuming, lifelong project. But Chavez always told the girls to go big or go home, so she agreed to start up the pantry. Her change of heart led to thousands of families getting food each month. 

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Today, the pantry is no longer in the small bus bay. Nestled between El Ranchero and Urban Air Adventure Park at 3609 IN-46, Pantry 279 provides pet food, baby products, cleaning supplies and more. 

Shelves are stocked with gluten-free products, protein snacks and canned goods. As shoppers snake through the shelves, more volunteers greet them at the refrigerated section, which is filled with Chobani coffee creamers, oat milks, other dairy products, hummus cups and juice. 

“The way the girls put it, it’s like ‘Willy Wonka,’ only with healthy food, not chocolate," Chavez said.  

The pantry is open five days a week. On Tuesdays, it’s open from 1:30-4 p.m. just for people with disabilities and seniors. 

Those days have become a social time for many seniors. Several of them, Chavez said, sit in the parking lot to chat and knit. Some of them even arrive at 7 a.m. before the pantry even opens its doors.  

Cardboard boxes filled with fresh produce line the floor. Tucked into a back corner are racks of clothes — every Thursday, the pantry rearranges the store so members can take home clothing, free of charge.  

The donated clothing comes largely from local families and, occasionally, companies such as PINK and White House Black Market. Sometimes, Chavez said, they are “swimming in clothes.” Shoppers are permitted six clothing days a year and can fill one shopping cart full of items. 

Anyone in the community is welcome to visit as a volunteer, shopper or both. Before Pantry 279 opens for the day, community members line up outside the doors. Once inside, volunteers greet them, check them in and keep the shopping process uniform and organized.  

“Here’s your protein, here’s your soup and here’s your green beans,” a volunteer listed one day in March as she checked out a customer. 

While volunteers are stationed around the store, even more work behind the scenes. 

2025 IU alumnus Andrew Hodges works as a part-time administrative assistant for Pantry 279, where he manages paperwork and applies for grant funding.  

At the back of the pantry, Brittney Hubbard, a newer volunteer who has been at the pantry for around two months, packages items for home deliveries.  

And amidst the chaos, Chavez converses with volunteers, works the computers and flits between the front and back sections of the pantry.  

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As well as everyday operations, the pantry also holds two holiday programs: a Thanksgiving box meal program and the ELF Dispatch, where parents register their children to receive Christmas gifts. Community members shop for those children and donate gifts to the pantry. The ELF Dispatch is unique from other holiday assistance initiatives because it provides for children 0-18.  

“We got to talking about it and we realized, you know, teenagers are old enough to understand their parent’s situation, but their frontal lobe has not formed enough to where they don’t internalize it,” Chavez said. “So, they can still think, ‘This is my fault that my parent is like this,’ even though it is not.” 

Since its inception in 2016, the ELF Dispatch program has provided Christmas gifts to a total of 13,603 families. In 2025 alone, it helped 2,433 families. 

Stephanee Stephens, volunteer coordinator and outreach lead, started volunteering at the pantry around five years ago after seeing a Facebook post asking for ELF Dispatch volunteers. Stephens told herself she would go for an hour and see if it would be helpful to get out of her house. 

“I pretty much never left after that,” she said. 

Stephens’ favorite aspect of the pantry is the people. 

“Not just the people that we serve, but the volunteers,” Stephens said. “I meet people from all walks of life, all backgrounds.”  

Among those volunteers are Ramsey and Kira Chavez, Cindy’s daughter who was also a member of the Girl Scout troop that started the pantry. Kira, a sophomore at Ivy Tech Community College and operator at Cook Medical, worked at the pantry from its inception until she graduated high school in 2025. Although she isn’t a frequent volunteer anymore, she still makes an effort to visit when she is able.  

Kira was around 8 years old when the Girl Scouts began forming Pantry 279. 

“I remember being in the back garage, helping my sisters build the shelves,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to touch the staple gun because I got banned from it after shooting Rowan with it.” 

When Kira does have time to volunteer at Pantry 279, her role varies. Her duties include checking people in, stocking produce or unloading palettes. Sometimes, she walks around checking in with volunteers and shoppers, providing emotional support. She said many of the volunteers are struggling and are clients of the pantry themselves. 

“There’s moments where they’re sobbing their eyes out because, like, their house just burnt down or their house got flooded or a parent just died or one of their kids just died,” Kira said. “And they don’t know what to do with themselves and you have to sit there and honestly just kind of be the shoulder to cry on.” 

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Pantry 279 is struggling to keep up with a higher demand and lower supply of food. 

In February 2020, Cindy said the number of people the pantry served was steady at 3,500 people monthly. Then, following shutdowns from the pandemic, need essentially “doubled overnight.” That need has never decreased.  

Cindy referred to a variety of funding being cut or limited, including SNAP benefits, healthcare and childcare assistance. She said these programs being cut tightened people’s budgets even more, resulting in increased demand for food. 

“Between government shutdowns, lack of funding, important programs being slashed, healthcare just being an expensive joke, and the continuing high prices of food, utilities, rent, car repairs, everything, the need stays high,” she said. “It's not just us, this is nationwide.” 

Cindy said Pantry 279 is doing everything it can to get the food needed to match the demand. The pantry asks for donations on social media. It is requesting grant money to be allocated specifically toward food, despite also needing other expenses like rent and electricity.  The pantry typically receives grants from companies like Cook Medical, Duke Energy and Smithville Charitable Foundation. The pantry has become stricter with item limits for shoppers and encouraged local farmers to bring extra eggs or produce to the pantry.  

“It looks like Amazon throws up on my front lawn at least twice a week with people sending us food from our Amazon wish list,” she said. 

Cindy said many pantry employees continue to work past closing time, making phone calls, writing emails and letters to ask for more food and help.  

“I know I typically work until 3-4 a.m. seven days a week. We do not take time off,” she said. “Maybe this makes us passionate, maybe crazy, I guess it depends on your point of view.” 

*** 

Food insecurity affects one in seven Hoosiers. From 2015 to 2025, Pantry 279 has served a total of 758,306 people — and is only one food pantry out of 25 in Monroe County. 

 However, despite food insecurity being such a common struggle, volunteers say stigmas persist regarding those who visit food pantries. 

One stereotype Cindy hears often is that everyone who goes to food pantries is either “homeless or lazy.” At Pantry 279, Cindy said, only two out of the thousands of people served monthly are homeless. Of the working-age adults, 80% of them, she said, have one or more jobs.  

“They are not lazy. They are working their butts off, they’re killing themselves,” she said. “They just don’t have enough money.”  

Cindy said life is a pendulum. It goes from one side to the other — someone may be struggling for years, but once they’re able to get back on their feet, they should give back by volunteering in any way they can. It doesn’t take much to make a difference, she said. 

“There is no shame in asking for help or going to food pantries at all,” Cindy said. “That’s what we’re here for.”  

When the busy hour at the pantry comes to a close, Cindy waves goodbye to shoppers and tells them to get home safely.  

As shoppers exit, a small blue sign above the door reads, “thanks for coming.”