At this moment in time, Kate Mushipi’s biggest problem isn’t some kind of existential crisis regarding her organization being suddenly unable to carry out their mission.

It’s actually a much simpler, logistical problem.

“A lot of people don’t know we’re here,” she said. “That’s kind of the big push we’re doing this year.”

Mushipi is the Executive Director of Good Neighbors, a nonprofit food assistance organization located in a large leased property directly next to St. Brendan Church on Turner Avenue in Riverside. But if you go to their listed address at 55 Turner Ave., you might find yourself a tad confused. The door to enter is actually on Dorr Avenue, near the adjacent parking lot.

But when you ultimately find your way inside the facility, you’ll witness a prime example of the magic that can happen when a meaningful mission is combined with passionate volunteers and an organized, state-supported network of partner agencies.

Serving your community, and beyond
Good Neighbors has operated in East Providence since 2013 when it moved to Riverside from Bristol, where it opened as a once-a-week soup kitchen since 1990. They acquired the Bread of Life food pantry at Newman Congregational Church in Rumford last year, and so now have the space to operate two food pantries for those in both north and south East Providence, along with neighboring communities.

With a staff of only two paid employees — bolstered by 130 dedicated volunteers and the support that comes with being a partner agency of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank — Good Neighbors made and served (or delivered) 18,133 hot meals in 2024. Nearly 1,350 unduplicated households visited the two pantries 6,684 times last year, directly feeding 4,181 unduplicated individuals. Most of these families, Mushipi said, are from the East Bay and Providence Metro areas.

While people are limited to two trips to the Riverside pantry each month, and once a month to the Rumford pantry, anybody is welcome to stop by the community kitchen in Riverside, where fresh, often locally-sourced meals are prepared every weekday, Monday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., available for dine-in or to grab and go. Visitors also have access to a Friday breakfast (with Bingo), and ancillary services like mail delivery, free laundry, a health clinic, haircuts, and even computer access.

Pantry shoppers get to select their own foods, and visitors get access to high-quality produce due to Good Neighbors’ relationship with Feast and Fettle, the East Providence-based meal delivery service who Mushini said donates as much as 40,000 pounds of overstock produce to the pantries each year.

“They pick everything themselves. That's just part of making sure that people don't feel less than because they need a little bit of extra food support,” she said. “And it’s stuff that a lot of the people that come here wouldn't have access to if they didn't get it through a place like Good Neighbors.”

Mushipi said that while they specifically seek to serve the East Providence area, they don’t ask questions when someone comes in looking for a meal.
“Anybody that comes here that's in need of food, we don't turn them away,” she said.

An unknown future amidst rising need
While operations might be running to high efficiency at the moment, national politics has entered the equation in more tangible ways that are less simple to ignore in recent months — and causing uncertainty among groups like Good Neighbors.

On Friday, President Donald Trump’s Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a savings of around $1 billion that was made from the cancellation of two Covid-era programs that supplied local, farm-fresh produce to schools and community food assistance organizations and food pantries. (Click here to read our story which goes into more detail on that, and how it affects Good Neighbors).

In Congress, meanwhile, Republicans in the House have proposed a budget bill that includes $230 billion in cuts over 10 years to the governmental arm that oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is relied on by around 144,000 Rhode Islanders (adults, seniors, and children).

And although those hypothetical cuts are far from actually being realized at this point, it has rung alarm bells in places like The Rhode Island Community Food Bank, which relies on funding from the federal government to supplement their food purchases, which ultimately winds up in dozens of places like Good Neighbors.

While Good Neighbors gets its food from a variety of places, the majority comes from the RI Food Bank. Mushipi said that the food bank also helped set up Good Neighbors’ relationships with multiple local supermarkets, such as Shaw’s on Willett Avenue, Aldi on Newport Avenue, and Stop & Shop on Pawtucket Avenue.

“I can’t understate the importance of the relationship with the food bank,” Mushipi said. “Not knowing exactly how [them possibly losing revenue] will affect all of the partner agencies…how will that trickle down and affect us? We don't know. We’re their feet on the ground, but they provide us with everything that we need to be their feet on the ground.”

That uncertainty is coming at a crucial time, as food assistance agencies across the state all report facing ever-increasing demand that started accelerating at the onset of Covid and hasn’t slowed since.

“We've seen a an increase in need year over year for the last three years,” Mushipi said. “Pre-Covid, our pantry was like a closet that was really more supplemental to the people that were coming in to our kitchen. It's not like that anymore. Our pantry is now the bigger program.”

Mushipi said that they saw a 20% increase in hot meals cooked and distributed just from 2023 to 2024, and a 74% increase in average visits per month to the food pantry since 2019. Around 25% of their visitors are considered “chronic need”, meaning they show up to every possible food pantry opening they can, and are likely visiting other pantries in the state as well.

Mushipi said that it was a common misconception that a majority of visitors to food pantries are in that “chronic need” category, when in reality 3/4 of their clientele consists of irregular visitors who only show up when things get really bad.

“One thing I’ve learned from working here is that everyone has a story,” she said. “I can't tell you how many registered nurses that we've had here who got into an accident and they're on disability, but their disability doesn't match the cost of living because of the income that they've had for X amount of years and now they have this gap because they're not making as much, and they just need to fill that need. And that’s what our mission is. To bridge the gap.”

Mushipi agreed that an increasing demand among the food insecure and a possibly shrinking federal allocation to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in the future could potentially upset the delicate balance established in the state’s food assistance network. Places like Good Neighbors might have to adjust how often they open pantries, and how much they are able to give out.

“We’d probably limit to once a month before we limit geographically. Because I do believe people prefer to go to pantries in a different community sometimes because of the stigma attached,” Mushipi said. “The biggest thing we need is support for the Food Bank.”

Staying optimistic
Despite the challenges that may be looming ahead, Mushipi is the kind of person you want leading a nonprofit when things get tough.

The native Townie joined the Peace Corps in the middle of the 2010s and wound up leading a team of volunteers in Swaziland in Southern Africa. She met her husband there, and after getting immigration paperwork sorted, moved back to the same street she grew up on in Kent Heights in 2021. She became executive director at Good Neighbors in 2022, and now she has more motivation than ever to lift up people who are sometimes her literal neighbors.

“I actually went to preschool in this room, in what is now this dining room,” she said from within the kitchen at Good Neighbors’ Riverside headquarters. “So I've really had a full circle moment.”

Mushipi said that nonprofit organizations will have to get creative and find opportunities to support one another rather than compete for donors and spotlight in the coming years. She remains optimistic that they will be able to fulfill their mission thanks to the community they have built.

“We are hopeful because as a volunteer-driven organization, we know firsthand just how many people in our community really care about this topic and we know we can work together to continue providing this essential service to our neighbors in need,” she said. “We are so grateful to our generous donors, partners and volunteers for making sure our mission continues on and people have the food they need to survive.”

And in the end it really comes down to meeting that simple, most human need. It’s something Mushipi found a lot of perspective on while in the Peace Corps, where she found people had a rosy, “Hollywood” view of America; and were often shocked to hear that people went without shelter and food even in the land of plenty.

“Poverty just wears different faces in different cultures,” she said. “If people don't have their basic needs met, like food, like shelter, like clothing, how can we ever expect them to be able to hold down a job? How can we ever expect them to be an active member of society? People need to eat.”