Food pantry ready to aid Lowell area.

Byline: RANDI BJORNSTAD The Register-Guard

LOWELL - Starting Tuesday, low-income residents in the Lowell-Fall Creek area who need help putting nutritious meals on the table will be able to get some help from the area's newest food pantry.

Marge Williamson, who helps local areas organize food pantries in conjunction with FOOD for Lane County, said the Lowell pantry "is a real cooperative venture involving several churches in the community."

"We have a very enthused group of about 15 volunteers there," Williamson said. "Besides picking out the good food they want to fix for their families, people who go there will be able to have coffee and snacks and pick up food stamp applications. There will also be coloring books and other activities for children. We want everyone to feel welcome."

The pantry will be open the first and third Tuesdays of each month from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the East Valley Open Bible Church at 72 E. Second St. in Lowell.

Lowell resident Greg Rundo, who will coordinate the pantry's operations, said it took six months to put the project together.

"It's been an incredible (effort) - a complete community project," Rundo said. "We had high school students from Lowell building walls and people from the churches cleaning everything out and doing all the painting and getting ready."

Some people donated refrigerators and freezers, but the pantry "could always use more," Rundo said. "We expect to feed 80 to 100 families through this pantry, and when you consider that there are probably about 1,000 people in Lowell and maybe the same number in the Fall Creek area, that's a pretty big percentage."

For more information, call Rundo at 937-2515 or Williamson at 895-3217.