MOLINE, Ill. — A local food pantry is set to receive a complete overhaul thanks to the passion of a Moline Boy Scout.
In the basement of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Moline, you'll find a 60-year-old food pantry that will soon enter the modern era.
"A lot of the shelves, they're supposed to sit like this, but they're bowing in, and a decent amount of those shelves are held up by just two-by-fours," Jacob Dehm said.
Dehm is an aspiring Eagle Scout, and for his final project, he's replacing all of the pantry's crumbling wood cupboards with sturdy metal shelves that will hopefully withstand the test of time.
"They'll actually allow for more storage area as well as more customizability because these ones, they're metal wire shelves ... This way they can be raised or lowered depending on what the pantry would like," he said.
And Dehm isn't just building new shelves. He's also building two new bagging stations that will help make work more efficient for the pantry's volunteers.
"In this 100-plus-year-old building, we need the update," pantry volunteer Peter Murray said.
Murray has been volunteering with the pantry for eight years. The pantry distributes roughly 250,000 pounds of food every year, and a majority of it comes from River Bend Food Bank.
"It makes it real simple, speeds up the process and enables more handouts in a quicker period of time," Murray said.
Dehm, a senior at Alleman High School, hopes to complete the project in February with the help of five of his troopmates. If you'd like to donate to help, you can do so here.
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