About Us — The Whole Overview

Welcome to PORCH Fearrington!

Just minutes from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Pittsboro. PORCH-Fearrington began in May 2011 and operates 12 months each year. Our volunteers collect food donated by our engaged, generous village residents and deliver it to the CORA Food Pantry in Pittsboro, which serves residents of Chatham County, NC.

Our PORCH Fearrington Partners

CORA Food Pantry -- A Community Partner

CHATHAM OUTREACH ALLIANCE

Chatham OutReach Alliance, Inc. (CORA) operates the largest food pantry in Chatham County, NC.  PORCH Fearrington is CORA’s largest single contributor of community-donated food. The pantry is located in the Town of Pittsboro, which is the County seat. Chatham is a large, mostly rural county (709 square miles) just west of the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill Research Triangle area and just east of the Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem Triad area. In spite of its proximity to affluent cities and developments, the economy in Chatham lags far behind its neighbors, unemployment is high, and jobs are scarce. CORA's mission is to provide for the basic food needs of the county's food-insecure citizens while they work their way toward self-sufficiency.

 

Goodbye Pittsboro Ford -- A Former Community Business Partner

 

 

How PORCH Works

PORCH is built around the very simple idea of a neighborhood food drive. Here’s how it works, in three easy steps:

1. The coordinators contact all of their contributing neighbors to arrange a date and time for the collection in their neighborhood, prior to the time of our collection.
2. Some coordinators pick up donations from their neighbors’ porches, and others ask that their neighbors bring their donations to the coordinators’ porches.
3. We pick up donations from the coordinators once a month, usually on the fourth Monday, between 10:00 a.m. and noon.

The three-step process is easy and it’s also fast. With the help of dedicated volunteers, all the food collected from the many neighborhood food drives moves from porch to pantry in just a few hours’ time. From there, it goes quickly into the hands of Chatham County families struggling to get enough food to eat.

For complete details on food donation recommendations and how to be involved, check here.

Our Fearrington Neighborhoods and Coordinators

Fearrington Village has 83 streets and roads and 23 neighborhoods. If you don’t see your neighborhood listed, we would love to add you to our list! Email fearrington@porchcommunities.org for more information. To contact a neighborhood coordinator listed below, click on that person’s name.

Our Community CORA Donation History

Our 2016 – 2018 annual month-by-month donation data are displayed in the listings below.  Since May 2011, PORCH-Fearrington has collected and delivered 173,405 pounds (86.4 tons) of food to CORA together with $30.318 of cash or check contributions, all donated by our village residents. To view tables showing our collection data for each month between May 2011 and October 2018, click here.

 

Recipients

CORA (COMMUNITY OUTREACH ALLIANCE) Food Pantry

http://corafoodpantry.org/ in Pittsboro, NC

Recipient Client Stories

• Jessica wants to be a teacher. In her work as a school bus driver, she says she sees too many children falling through the cracks and just wants to help these kids get a better start on life. She is now studying for her Associate's Degree and hopes to go to UNCG to finish college and get her teaching certificate. In the meantime, CORA helped her to stretch her income as a school bus driver to meet the needs of her family of three including two school-age children who were enrolled in CORA’s SNACK! program.  Update: After trying to make a go of things in another state, Jessica is back in Chatham County, is gainfully employed and has not had to visit the pantry in more than six months. She would still like to finish her Bachelor’s Degree but for now, she is happy to be able to support her family. Her daughter has completed courses at CCCC to be a Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA), has a job and her own apartment. Her daughter's dream is to work with babies either in delivery or in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Jessica's daughter and daughter want to thank CORA volunteers who give so much time and are so helpful, and the contributors to CORA who make it possible for them to help so many people.
• Chandra came to CORA for food assistance after a succession of misfortunes lasting several months. Living with a medical disability on a meager monthly social security check, she and her two teenaged sons were burnt out of her rental house in mid-January of that year. Her sons were able to move in with relatives. With only a few items of clothing left, Chandra lived in motels for several weeks with the support of local churches. Other providers helped with vouchers for clothing and a small amount of food at a local grocer. Then she had to sell her only remaining asset, her aging car, for just $100 to get just enough for a few more nights in a motel. That’s when she came to CORA. She told us that she had just enough to move into a nearby apartment, but she had nothing to eat.  Moreover, she had no furniture and was sleeping on the floor with only a blanket. Not only was CORA able to help with a generous supply of groceries, CORA volunteers mobilized to help find donations of dishes and kitchenware, a table and chairs, and other household goods. Just this week Chandra proudly told us that she was to start a new job the next day and also that she was going to take the assessment test for her GED in the coming weeks. “Thank you CORA for being my new friends.  Your help has meant so much.”
• Genita was a recovering drug addict who had been clean for two years. She was jailed for 44 months for her drug use. She could not find a job, as few businesses are willing to hire an ex-felon. She was trying to get by on odd jobs such as yard work. She says that without the help of CORA and other agencies, she would be “out on the streets with no food.” She was the mother of a 20-year-old daughter and the grandmother of a 2-year-old. When her daughter got pregnant, she told her mother that she could not see her grandson unless she straightened up. Genita wanted more than anything to be a person that her grandson would be proud of. CORA helped her be that person. Genita has not had to return to CORA in more than 6 years.
• One day at the pantry Dick Kahler, a CORA "stocker," responded to the ringing of the back door bell, where food donations are brought to CORA.  A young woman was there with bags of groceries to donate to CORA. As is always the case, the donation was weighed and recorded and Dick asked the woman if she would like a receipt for her gift.  She responded: "no, I'm just so glad I can make a contribution. Only a few months ago, I was a recipient of CORA's support and generosity and this donation is the least I can do to say 'thank you' and show my appreciation for CORA's support when I needed it …"