By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer
Helping Hands Food Pantry opened again Monday after being closed since late August.
Artis Born, one of the volunteers at the pantry affiliated with the Dorthae Pentecostal Church, said remodeling at the pantry should be finished soon, but it will be open each Monday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon.
She said there was some traffic Monday but expects more once the word of the reopening gets out.
The pantry was one of the largest in the Tri-County area when it closed.
At that time, she said, the pantry was feeding about 600 families per month.
Some of the food that was left when it closed was distributed Monday.
It got and will get food from God’s Pantry Food Bank in Lexington, a service that provides food for most of the pantries in the area.
The facility was a distributor for the Angel Food Ministries before it closed, and that service was transferred to Dayspring Worship Center in North Corbin.
At the pantry’s August closing, Pastor Billy Evans said the closing would be temporary and explained that the decision to close was caused by “division and discord” among the organization.
Charles Prewitt, who watched over the pantry’s operations at Dorthae, is now involved with the pantry at Grace on the Hill United Methodist Church.
“I’m glad it’s reopened. But, they made some hasty decisions. It shouldn’t have been closed,” he said.
The Dorthae location was one of the better outfitted pantries in the area and served a large number of clients in the area.
Christina Bentley of Tri-CAN, Tri-Counties Assistance Network, a group that includes among other services, about 10 other pantries, said the Dorthae facility is one of the largest facilities in physical space.
It functioned as a warehouse for other pantries in the area, she said, noting that it has a lot of cooler and freezer space.
