St. Augustine Wellston Center

Our client-choice pantry is the Wellston Center's core service, feeding approximately 300 families - over 800 individuals - each month. Clients are provided nutritious bags filled with staple food items, such as meat, eggs, milk, and canned goods, that are assembled by volunteers based on client selections from our food menu. We strive to serve each client with enough groceries estimated to last a month. Our focus is on balanced and individualized nutrition to meet complex diet needs. Household supplies, personal care items and some basic infant supplies are distributed when available.

Beyond our food pantry, we aim to help our clients with their other immediate needs. We offer financial assistance to help keep utilities on, avoid eviction and address or meet other short-term needs on an individual basis. Volunteer nurses from Mercy Neighborhood Services provide blood pressure checks and education about key health topics including diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and stress. We also organize a support group of clients to discuss family issues, grief, and other community concerns. Recognizing the cost and need for school supplies, every year we research the supply lists of each grade of the local schools. Using donations, the food pantry offers school book bags filled with the items students need. Through the St. Louis Area Foodbank, we distribute boxes of shelf-stable foods to 45 local seniors. This program is intended to help low-income seniors supplement the food they can afford to buy at the store.

We ultimately seek to support, empower, and provide high quality resources and services to our community in a safe and secure environment. Our success isn't measured in terms of wealth or profit margin, but by the value we provide to those we serve. All of these efforts work together to take a little off our clients' financial plates, allowing them to use their limited resources to regain financial footing and live healthy and productive lives.