How long does it take to create a food pantry?

For staff and students at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, the answer was less than one week.

While juggling college applications, coursework, fall sports and after-school jobs, a cadre of students helped faculty put together a food pantry at the North Baltimore high school last week.

“I personally know a lot of people who have SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program],” said Poly senior Chelsea Zellous, 17, of West Baltimore. “The government money that they used to get their groceries wasn’t going to be there.”

Zellous, fellow senior Ibeth Ruano Hurtarte, 17, of Armistead Gardens, and other students aided staff members in planning and organizing an effort that distributed groceries and other essentials to more than 200 people last week.

The pantry will be open again today from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. in the lobby of Poly. All are welcome, not just families of Poly students.

The idea arose from a conversation between school counselor Emily Birx and Assistant Principal Matt Adelberg early this month.

The federal government had been shut down for weeks, and many Baltimore families were panicking after learning they would not be receiving SNAP benefits. (Now that the government has reopened, Maryland families should be receiving SNAP funds in the coming days.)

“We were concerned about our community,“ Birx said. ”We have lots of kids who receive SNAP and other government assistance.”

About 60% of Poly’s 1600 students come from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, she said.

Birx mentioned her concerns to students in her senior advisory group and found the young people eager to take action. Zellous and Ruano Hurtarte popped into Birx’s office several times the first day, sharing ideas and plans.

The girls were worried students would feel uncomfortable gathering items from a food pantry during the school day. Birx and Adelberg decided to open the pantry in the school’s lobby on a Saturday, when parents could pick up the goods.

As word spread, students began lugging boxes of nonperishable goods, cleaning products and toiletries into school. Alumni heard about the efforts and sent donations. One mother of a current student made a series of TikTok videos promoting the effort.

By the time the food pantry was slated to open last Saturday, the students had neatly stacked 600 cans of food, 65 cartons of eggs, 74 loaves of bread and 200 bags of fresh produce, Birx said.

Then came the nervous wait. Would people show up?

A half hour before the pantry was slated to open, a family arrived. And then another and another. By the end of the day, people had taken groceries to support 230 people.

Student volunteers served as “personal shoppers” for each family, helping them select groceries and pack them into bags. Parent volunteers also arrived throughout the day with additional donations of items that ran short.

The students are eager to make this weekend’s pantry even better. They’ve been working to get more of the items that were most in demand last week, including period care products and toiletries. They aren’t sure how many more weeks they will keep running the pantry now that the government has reopened.

But Zellous and Ruano Hurtarte said it has been a valuable learning experience for them and their classmates. At a time when many feel powerless to respond to the Trump administration’s sweeping overhaul of the federal government, organizing the food pantry has given them a concrete way to aid others.

“Helping out is the way to go,” Zellous said.

Ruano Hurtarte, a member of Poly’s Latino student organization and a health leadership institute for young people, has been a part of many volunteering efforts. But helping to build a food pantry from the ground up gave her a real sense of her power to effect change, she said.

“One family, after we had helped them with their food and put it in their car, they said we were a blessing to them,” Ruano Hurtarte recounted. “I’m proud my community can do this.”