To feed community members, Crossroads partners with churches, public housing facilities and neighborhood centers

Mary Wesley walks to her church just a block from Carpenter’s Point, a housing community in Dolphin Heights for elderly people on a fixed income. She’s going to help pack boxes of food for her neighbors. She’s been volunteering once a month for 10 years.

“We enjoy giving out vegetables, because so many people like cooking vegetables, and meat sometimes, like tuna fish and sausage,” Wesley, 71, says. 

This month, it’s mostly canned fruits and vegetables, spaghetti and ready-to-go meals. There are about 30 cartons of milk and prepackaged cheese. The fresh dairy items will go quickly.

As part of a North Texas-wide food distribution network, The Cities of Refuge church serves about 60 regular clients, says April Parker, the church’s executive assistant. Most are enrolled in government assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. The nearest grocery store is more than a mile away. 

Wesley and many others rely on The Cities of Refuge and nearby Progressive Baptist Church for access to healthy food.

“I think we definitely help to supplement to make sure people are getting nutritious food just because there isn’t a grocery store around here,” Parker says. 

For the past 10 years, Crossroads Community Services, a North Texas Food Bank partner and food pantry in Red Bird, has built relationships with more than 100 community partners — churches like The Cities of Refuge, public housing facilities and community centers — to address food insecurity. 

This is part of Crossroads’ community distribution partner model, a unique approach to food distribution that serves almost 32,000 people across Dallas and neighboring counties. Crossroads works with community partners to enroll clients in its food assistance program. Then, at least once a month, the partner picks up the food in bulk from Crossroads’ southern Dallas facility. 

Parker says The Cities of Refuge spends $100 to $125 a month for a delivery van and driver, depending on the size of the load. Volunteers then organize the food and distribute it to neighborhood clients who are enrolled in the program and expected to pick up their food consistently on a monthly basis. 

Parker orders the food online. “I try to get the proteins first, because they are the most filling, and go down from there,” she says. The spring and summer are better for fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Most people that come to our [Red Bird] food pantry come to it as a last resort, when their food stamps have run out at the end of the month,” says Katie Peters, who manages community relations at Crossroads. “The unique thing about our community partners is that they typically have recurring clients … Our community partners, by design, are truly within the community.” 

Rooted in a neighborhood, a community partner like The Cities of Refuge already has strong relationships with residents. So the neighborhood food distribution site can be more accessible and approachable.

Some clients remain enrolled with their neighborhood community partner for several months until they no longer need food assistance. Others have continued to rely on the distribution for years. 

Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Dallas have been working with Crossroads since 2011 as part of the Community Assistance Research (CARE) initiative, which seeks solutions to systemic problems in the Dallas area.

Their latest study, set to be published later this year, shows that clients who use food assistance consistently suffer significantly less food insecurity and experience better health outcomes when compared to residents who use a central pantry, like the one at Crossroads in Red Bird, as a last resort.

According to Tammy Leonard, the co-director of CARE, the Crossroads community distribution model provides the framework to develop a long-term, community-based approach to food assistance that may be part of the solution to food insecurity.

Their research shows that clients of the Crossroads pantry typically travel an average of 7.8 miles to get food, while clients who receive food from community partners travel an average of 1.6 miles. 

For the elderly community at Carpenter’s Point, access to transportation has been one of the main barriers in getting access to healthy food. Wesley is one of few residents who has her own car. She often gives rides to neighbors when they have to go to the store or pay their bills. 

According to Leonard, low-income elderly people may be a population whose needs are met particularly well by this model, due to health challenges, difficulty with transportation and the need for social connectivity.

The residents surveyed for the study who received food from community partners also report significantly better overall health.

“They have better self-rated health, which is a very general, easy-to-answer question, but it’s fairly predictive of health outcomes like life expectancy,” Leonard says.

Parker knows that’s definitely the case for the clients who come to the Cities of Refuge Church. “With the population we serve, there are a lot of pre-existing conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cancer,” she says. Several of her clients aren’t on as much medication as they were before the distributions started.

“This approach that Crossroads has — reaching out to other organizations that really know their local community and enrolling them into these monthly food deliveries — is not the norm, but it’s been rather