Kenny Robinson Sr. moves quickly Monday through the one-room food pantry inside Chosen Bethel Family Ministries in Englewood on the South Side.
He drops bags of spaghetti into more than a dozen cardboard boxes that will be distributed to the area’s older adults to help feed them for about 10 days. On another table, Robinson and four other volunteers are also setting up for the afternoon pantry. He hauls boxes of pasta and canned beans from a neatly organized closet that he regularly stocks and volunteers have nicknamed “Kenny’s closet.”
Robinson, 61, of Englewood, started volunteering at the pantry about two years ago after he was standing in line to get food and noticed the church needed more help. The pantry supplements the $158 in monthly benefits he receives from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP…