With God’s Grace maintains its mission to feed the Miami Valley
Nicole Adkins is one seriously determined lady.
When it comes to feeding the needy in the Miami Valley, Nicole, her family and the army of volunteers that make up With God’s Grace will stop at nothing to get the job done. When Kroger decided to close its grocery store at 1934 Needmore Road in Harrison Township in November of 2019, creating a food desert in the Northridge area, Adkins knew what she had to do—open a store that gives away groceries to hungry people. For free.
“This has always been my dream, and what we were working towards,” says Adkins, executive director of With God’s Grace, the local charitable organization behind the free store. Started in December of 2015, With God’s Grace is staffed entirely by volunteers and funded through donations. In five years of operation the food pantry has provided over 3 million pounds of free food to hungry families in the Dayton area. The charity holds regular mobile food pantries in locations all over the Dayton area, and it also has weekly food distributions on Wednesdays at the warehouse it’s used for the last several years. It was that warehouse, located at 622 Springfield St. in Dayton, and the regular food distributions there that were the focus of a very public battle with the city of Dayton over zoning issues in 2018.
“I really want to help our families become self-sufficient,” continues Adkins now that those difficulties are behind her. “And the only way is to figure out the reason why they need help, to be able to give them resources to help them become more self-sufficient and not have to be dependent on using a food pantry. The only way to stop hunger is to figure out their why and provide them with the resources they need to become self-sufficient.”
With God’s Grace Free Store will operate as a year-round free grocery store once it opens this month, allowing people to shop for their basic needs without worrying about paying for their purchases. There will be no charges for those referred to the store, or to the people and agencies that send them. They may shop for food to help them get through times of crisis as they work toward self-sufficiency. A philosophy of community empowerment means that With God’s Grace’s aims to solve hunger issues in the community by developing programs to meet the needs of the community, including partnering with other organizations on issues of food security. With God’s Grace believes in cooperation and collaboration between organizations to better serve the community, and it plans to provide cooking and nutrition classes for families.
With God’s Grace Free Store will be located at 5505 North Dixie in Northridge. Before coming to the Free Store family members must have an appointment, and when the shoppers come they are asked to bring a photo ID for all adult members in the family, a birth certificate or medical card for all minors, and a piece of mail with current address from the last 30 days. With God’s Grace Free Store will be open to Montgomery, Preble and Greene county residents.
