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Celeste Mader is an AmeriCorps member serving at GoodRoots Northwest. As a part of their Locker launch team, Celeste engages and educates community members on the Locker program. This is achieved through outreach tabling events, group presentations at local resource centers, and customer support regarding onboarding.

During her first 5 months of service, AmeriCorps member Celeste has seen a tremendous amount of exciting change within her organization, Good Roots NW. On her first day of service, mobile access food Lockers were only available at two locations, in Buckley and Bonney Lake. Now, while quickly approaching 6 months of her AmeriCorps service, GoodRoots is providing this essential and life changing food access to 5 locations throughout East Pierce County.

Now you may be asking, what are these lockers? These temp-controlled, WiFi-operated refrigerator units have the capacity to store 16 separate customer food orders safely for up to 12 hours. 1 of the 16 doors in the unit will pop open with the customers specific, online placed order when the shopper ID or order code is entered into the electronic kiosk at the center of the unit. Customers get to choose from a variety of fresh produce, proteins, dairy, grains and shelf stable items on the easy-to-navigate website, averaging each order to be 60 pounds of groceries!

Life-changing assistance may be a bold claim to make. Which is why the city of Carbonado is a perfect example to back that up. Carbonado citizens do not have the privilege of a town grocery store. In fact, the closest store that offers food items is two cities over (a corner market that offers mayonnaise at $12 a jar). So, in order to feed their families, citizens were having to travel 30-45 minutes each way just to access a fully stocked grocery store. After locker installation, locals can walk 5-10 minutes to their post office and get fresh, free groceries once a week.

Our member has most notably seen her impact to the locker program during tabling events in Orting, Bonney Lake, Carbonado, Wilkeson, South Prairie, and surrounding areas. Events she’s represented her organization at have ranged from fun festivities at Wilkeson Days and South Prairie Days, where community members got to enjoy attractions like hand cart races, stilt walkers, and face painting. On less glamorous days and more often than not, she simply tables outside a public access area, such as a food bank or library, and offers customer service to the public. Service can look like many things depending on the customer. Sometimes she just offers a brief breakdown of the lockers and what they do, and provides materials in case the person wants to sign up. Other cases require some in-depth explanations, tech support, and even some particular emotional care.

Since initiating service in this area, well over 90 families have signed on and successfully placed Locker orders. The member has also personally signed 35 members of the community into the program. This impact can be heard with praises of the lockers from citizens, who chat excitedly about what special produce items they received that week, or how easy it was to retrieve their order while they wait for their turn in the food pantry. This program has absolutely skyrocketed in such a short time and is now expected to be serving 300+ individuals! In a town with a population of 740, this means almost half of residents already have improved food security within two months of the locker launch.