Community pantries run with a mom’s touch

DOING HER PART BY COOKING Nanay Gay Piadoche of Heaven’s Touch cafeteria in Sampaloc, Manila, distributes meals that she prepared tomembers of her community, including front-liners and other people in need. —PHOTO FROM HEAVEN’S TOUCH FACEBOOK PAGE

MANILA, Philippines — It will be a stretch for any government task force to “red-tag” these community pantry organizers.

Some of the food aid stations that have sprouted across the country are being run by women who are simply driven by their maternal instinct to help the needy despite their own family priorities.

About nine months into her pregnancy, April Mostoles decided to put up a community pantry in her neighborhood in San Andres Bukid, Manila.

Instead of giving herself and her family a treat when she turned 29 last month, the former overseas worker decided to organize an aid station together with friends, inspired as they were by the pioneering Maginhawa Community Pantry in Quezon City that made headlines last month.

Mostoles initially intended her project to run for just a day, but it’s now on its second week thanks to the donations that kept pouring in.

Still busy while in labor

The San Andres pantry was already on its 13th day when the Inquirer spoke to Mostoles on Thursday — a day after she gave birth to a baby girl.

“While I was in labor, I was still coordinating the distribution of goods. We were supposed to stop on Wednesday, the day I gave birth. But we did not want the fresh produce to go to waste. We wanted to distribute the goods,” she said in a phone interview.

A food and beverage company, which she had emailed for sponsorship, sent her its donations on that same day. And so “who am I to say no to that?”

Mostoles and her partner used to work in Doha, Qatar. They were supposed to return to jobs there after a brief homecoming, but the pandemic forced a change of plans.

The couple decided to start anew by putting up a store supplying baking needs.

Business had been good, and out of a sense of gratitude they thought of finding a way to give back to the community by joining the pantry movement.

“I always tell my kids, life is short and you will never know what will happen. We can afford to eat more than three times a day, buy what we want and have a home to sleep in,” she said. “We may not be rich, but why not share what we can? It may not be a lot, but we can always share our blessings to someone.”

2 days, 15 beneficiaries

Jenny Castañeda-Tabrilla was also inspired to start a community pantry in her Antipolo City neighborhood.

“There was none here in our area, so I decided to put up one,’’ she told the Inquirer.

Tabrilla’s husband, a construction worker, had just found employment in Pampanga province and they needed a steady income like everyone else. But that didn’t stop her from asking for donations of fresh produce from the neighborhood market for her pantry.

She handed out vegetables from a stall outside her house for two days and recalled playing Good Samaritan to at least 15 people.

And she’s plotting a bigger comeback. “It’s hard to start your own pantry, but I think I can still expand mine [or] make it mobile so I can drop off goods to other pantries that are just starting,’’ she said.

Piece of Heaven

In Manila, Ligaya Piadoche did her pantry part the way she knew best: Cooking.

Known in her neighborhood as “Nanay Gay,” Piadoche runs the Heaven’s Touch cafeteria near the University of Santo Tomas (UST) campus.

As the metropolis came under lockdown, and moved by the hardships faced by medical front-liners, Piadoche started preparing packed meals and sent them over to the UST Hospital staff.

She said it was also her way of reciprocating their patronage of her cafeteria on Asturias Street for the last 14 years.

During the pandemic, Nanay Gay also cooked for street dwellers and, at one point, for some residents who had lost their homes in a fire.

But she also needed donations to keep her charity work going, and her son Reggie had been helping her find donors and contact private companies.

Reggie recalled getting help from celebrities as well. One day, “we thought we had nothing more to give away. Then Erwan [Heussaff] donated money. When the funds started to dry up, Angel Locsin suddenly collaborated with us,” he said.

Even some UST alumni, those who used to eat regularly at Heaven’s Touch before the pandemic, heard of his mother’s work and sent donations.

The Heaven’s Touch community pantry offers both basic goods and Piadoche’s packed meals.

“It’s as if I’m just selling food,’’ she said. “I don’t have a lot of things to do nowadays because the cafeteria’s operations have been scaled down. That’s just fine. I don’t feel tired at all.”