Everyone deserves enough food to eat.
This page is for information about food pantries, free meals, grocery assistance, community gardens, food sharing, and other ways neighbors can help one another get the food they need.
We also want to encourage residents to share surplus food, volunteer, and help connect neighbors with local food resources.
Helping Neighbors Get Food and Helping Neighbors Share Food
Everyone deserves enough food to eat.
Sometimes people need emergency groceries. Sometimes they need help getting to a store, applying for food benefits, preparing meals, or stretching their food budget.
Other neighbors may have extra food, garden produce, time, transportation, or skills they would be happy to share.
The Kendall-Whittier Residents Association wants to make it easier to find food assistance, share available resources, and work together to help prevent hunger in our neighborhood.
Kendall Whittier, Inc. operates a neighborhood food pantry that provides free groceries to eligible households.
Food assistance: 918-592-3000
Leave a message with your name, telephone number, and address.
The pantry provides approximately one week's worth of groceries for each household member, once a month.
Service area: Between Pine Street and 11th Street, and between Lansing Avenue and Harvard Avenue. This service area is larger than the Kendall-Whittier neighborhood itself.
Food assistance is available through delivery within the service area.
Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma
Find food pantries and feeding programs throughout eastern Oklahoma.
211 Eastern Oklahoma
Dial 211 for help finding food, housing, utility assistance, and other community services.
You can also text your ZIP code to 877-836-2111.
Iron Gate
Provides free daily meals and a grocery pantry in downtown Tulsa. Grocery pantry registration is required.
Tulsa City-County Library Food Resources
The library maintains a list of food assistance programs in Tulsa and surrounding communities.
Programs may change their hours, requirements, and available services. Check with the organization before visiting.
SNAP (Food Benefits)
SNAP helps eligible households pay for groceries.
Oklahoma SNAP Information and Applications
WIC
WIC provides food and nutrition support for eligible pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children.
Neighborhood grocery stores do more than sell food. They provide jobs, support local families, serve different cultures and food traditions, and help people meet their everyday needs close to home.
Small independent grocers, neighborhood markets, and specialty food stores are especially important to residents who cannot easily travel across town to shop.
When a neighborhood loses its grocery stores, residents may face longer trips, higher transportation costs, fewer food choices, and greater dependence on food assistance.
Supporting local grocers is part of protecting neighborhood food access.
We want to work with residents and local businesses to:
Encourage residents to shop at neighborhood grocers when they can.
Identify and promote independently owned grocery stores and markets.
Support grocers serving the different cultures and communities of Kendall-Whittier.
Learn what challenges local grocers face and what assistance they might need.
Protect existing grocery access when redevelopment, rising property costs, road projects, or other changes threaten neighborhood businesses.
Encourage safe sidewalks, crossings, bicycle access, public transportation, and convenient access to stores.
Include residents and small business owners in decisions about commercial development and neighborhood planning.
Explore ways grocers can participate in food-sharing, surplus food recovery, and other community projects.
Supporting neighborhood businesses should not mean ignoring concerns about food prices, quality, accessibility, or working conditions. Residents, workers, and business owners all deserve to be heard.
Our goal is to help maintain a neighborhood where people can buy the food they need, businesses can remain viable, and important local services are not pushed out without residents having a say.
Food assistance does not always have to come through a formal program.
Neighbors can help one another by:
Sharing surplus garden produce and other food.
Helping someone pick up or receive groceries.
Offering transportation to a grocery store or pantry.
Helping a neighbor apply for available food assistance.
Preparing meals for someone who is sick or unable to cook.
Sharing information about free meals and food distributions.
Volunteering with neighborhood food programs.
Even small acts of cooperation can make a difference.
We would like to explore neighborhood projects that help connect available food and resources with people who need them.
Food Sharing: Helping neighbors share extra groceries, garden produce, and other usable food.
Community Gardens: Supporting existing gardens and exploring opportunities to grow and share food.
Food Recovery: Working with willing businesses, restaurants, and organizations to redirect safe, usable surplus food instead of wasting it.
Grocery Assistance: Connecting residents who need help shopping or picking up groceries with neighbors who can assist.
Community Meals: Bringing people together to prepare, share, and enjoy meals.
School Break Food Support: Helping families find meal programs and other resources when school is not in session.
These are opportunities to explore, not services that the Residents Association currently promises to provide.
Do you know about a food program we should include?
Do you operate or shop at a neighborhood grocery store we should know about?
Do you grow extra vegetables? Have time to help with grocery deliveries? Know a business interested in sharing surplus food?
Or do you see an unmet food need in Kendall-Whittier?
We want to hear from you.
Email: kdubtulsa@gmail.com
Please do not send or publicly post another person's private circumstances without their permission.
Our goal is simple: make better use of what our neighborhood already has, support organizations and local businesses doing this work, and help neighbors take care of one another.