While many other teens slept through spring break, a 14-year-old Dixieland girl teamed up with her family to create a new community food pantry for pets, stocked with free animal food and supplies. I did.
“Vivian's Pets Pantry” is the brainchild of Vivian Oquendo, a Lakeland High School student who is an animal lover, keeps chickens, and dreams of becoming a veterinarian. The pantry opened on March 13 next to her LKLD Free Refrigerator at 1319 Hartselle Avenue, across from Lakeland's Christian School.
The free refrigerator and pet pantry are both stocked by donors. Oquendo's family took over management of the Free Refrigerator earlier this year and moved it from its previous location at 516 Windsor Street to their property in January, building a wooden enclosure for it.
Moving the LKLD Free Refrigerator into her home was Oquendo's mother's idea. When the facility opened in February, the young teenager who helps her family run it made an observation.
“When I first saw LKLD's free refrigerator, I said to my mother that all these people are suffering and need free food. But what about their pets?” Oquendo asked. .
She said it was heartbreaking to see so many people taking food out of the free fridge in the garden but no food to feed their pets. They were inspired to create the pantry after noticing that some people were taking human food and feeding it to animals.
“I've loved animals ever since I was little. I see them as equals to me. I feel so sad when I hear that people have lost their pets. It really touches my heart when I see animals suffering. It hurts,” Oquendo said.
“I'm so excited to be able to help so many families who can't afford to feed their pets,” she said. “They say they really need it because their family has a lot of pets. People come in and say they have seven or eight cats that they really need.”
Vivian's stepfather, George Lewis, spent one weekend building a pet pantry. Inside, Oquendo created colorful graphics to help understand the variety of products available, including cat and dog food, reptile food, hamster food, collars, and kitty litter.
Oquendo runs social media for the effort, creating colorful flyers on Canva and posting them to thank donors. When the pantry receives donations, she portions the food into smaller portions so it can pass more food around.
“A lot of people were really excited to see the pet pantry,” Oquendo said. “This woman donated a huge bag of pet food, reptile food and hamster food. I thought that was really nice.”
Lewis said donations range from people having Amazon items shipped to their homes to people having items delivered directly to them.
“I said, 'We get more donations to pet pantries than we do to human pantries,'” Lewis said, which surprised her.
Lewis said the project taught him a lot about community philanthropy. A believer in self-reliance, he said he never believed in donations or alms and always thought of the downside of people taking advantage of the situation. That is, until now.
“We're always collecting donations. People come in with bags of things they've bought themselves or have shipped from Amazon, which makes this community great for everyone,” Lewis said. said. “Someone goes out and spends $200 to $300 on groceries for someone they don't know. It's amazing and we get a lot of it.”
Lewis is a foreman of sorts, with a security camera system to monitor the operation of the refrigerator and pantry. He said homeless people often come to get what they need, but he was surprised to see some who appeared to be wealthy.
“People pull up in their Lexus, clean out their pantries, and (take) out whole bags of apples,” Lewis said. “We put the meat out there… (and they) received a whole four-pack of meat.”
But overall, he said, “it's going pretty well,” and they're happy to serve people in need.
Free refrigerators are always in need of donations, but Vivian's Pets Pantry is currently in need of more cat litter and reptile food.
