Kenzie Hinson celebrates many milestones with her organization, Make a Difference (MAD) Food Pantry.
The food pantry was created when Hinson was only ten years old and celebrates its tenth anniversary soon.
For the first time, its doors temporarily closed last week for Hinson to go into surgery for a heart procedure.
Serving Duplin, Wayne and Sampson counties, the warehouse is situated in Mount Olive and set up like a grocery store for families to pick up items as if they were shopping for produce.
The Hinson family first opened up the MAD food pantry in a church fellowship hall. The facility is now housed at a 10,000 square foot warehouse that features a clothing bank on one side and additional shelter capacity for severe weather.
Tonie Williams is a retiree that has the energy of an elementary school student. She first heard about the pantry during the Hinsons’ visit to her church and has volunteered for six years.
“My daughter was fussing at me that you’re retired and retirees need to do something,” said Williams.
Originally working in the vegetable room, Williams currently works in the kids room where children of families in need can spend time and play together while the adults do the shopping.
Hinson is still at the beginning of her career and finishing her higher education studies. As a senior in college, she is enrolled in paramedic school and works full-time as an EMT when she is not at the MAD food pantry.
Her interest in the medical field makes sense with her immense care for helping heal others. Her grandfather and aunt were paramedics which sparked her interest in that career along with a heart condition that she is getting treated.
Physician assistant schooling is next for Hinson as she plans to study pediatric cardiology.
“I want to provide the comfort and the care that my physicians showed me when I was there.”
Growing up, Hinson shares that she was shy but heavily involved in 4-H projects.
“I was a big 4-H and FFA kid growing up.”
Through 4-H she became inspired after research and speeches on the topic of food insecurity during a public speaking contest.
She volunteered at several food pantries and noticed that the pantries were giving out what they had remaining, rather than providing food with nutritional value.
“Why not make it nutritious and why not make them feel at home?”
Before opening the doors at 3:30 p.m., the team and volunteers shuffled around and joined hands in a circle for a beautiful group prayer.
Each room is prepared and set up with different themes for shopping including fruit, veggies, bread, and meats. When people arrive, they are taken out of the heat of the summer and receive numbers that correspond to a shopping cart.
“People do not get the opportunity to grocery shop like they need to for the nutritional needs to fit their family so we try to offer that. We try to offer the whole grocery store experience for them.”
Hinson stresses the delicacy of opening up the conversation since times can be hard and anyone is at risk of facing food insecurity.
“Everybody is one paycheck away from this.”
“I think that we’ve opened up the dialogue a lot when it comes to talking about topics like addiction and overdosing as well as food insecurities.”
“We actually have volunteers from Potter’s Wheel, they’re a drug and alcohol rehab facility out of Duplin County.”
The MAD food pantry brings together volunteer organizations to tackle more than one issue in the community.
“The soup kitchen is actually named after my brother, he died of a heroin overdose.”
Hinson was thirteen when he passed away, and tried to stay positive by talking to schools through educational events on how drugs and alcohol to open the dialogue and provide resources to fix these problems.
Mother of Kenzie Hinson, Pagelia Hinson, is actively involved in running the warehouse and MAD food pantry. She believes that everyone here has braved many storms and has become like a family.
“There’s so many reasons for this pantry and it’s not just food,” she said.
No one thought it would grow as quickly as it did. “We just hit our ten year milestone and our 25 million meal milestone,” said Hinson.
The MAD food pantry and MAD clothing closet is open the second, third, and fourth Wednesdays of every month from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
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