NOTE: This information is taken from interviews with people who helped
to found CORA, and as an oral history record, is approximate and incomplete.

In 1988, the Salvation Army in Chatham County stocked a food pantry which was housed at the Department of Social Services. Families could visit the pantry twice a year and receive a total of $35 worth of food each time. Jay Olsen, a member of Pittsboro Presbyterian Church, was on the board of the Salvation Army at that time, and worked at the pantry.

Late in 1988 an ad hoc committee was formed at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Pittsboro to identify ministry needs in Chatham county. After several sessions, the formation of a more extensive food pantry surfaced as an important need. Bill Coolidge, the St. Bart's priest at that time, sent a letter to 132 churches in Chatham County to discuss the situation. Thirteen churches responded, and they met with social service agencies. Olsen, in the meantime, researched food pantry operations at InterFaith Council in Chapel Hill and Orange Congregations
in Mission in Hillsborough, and modified their by-laws for the new organization.

County offices were in the process of moving into a new space, and two rooms
in the old house were available for CORA . The pantry opened in 1989, and the county did not charge any rent from the organization. Two more rooms were added later and a grant was secured to buy two deep-freeze units.

Jay Olsen was the first CORA provisioner, and he shopped weekly at
the NC Food Bank in Raleigh . Groceries were 10 cents a pound at that time. Unfortunately, no one at the time of this writing remembers all the eight founding churches! Our best collective guess is as follows:

• St. Bartholomew¹s Episcopal Church in Pittsboro
• Pittsboro Presbyterian Church in Pittsboro
• Pittsboro United Methodist Church in Pittsboro
• Hickory Mountain Baptist Church in Siler City
• Siler City United Methodist Church in Siler City
• Goldston United Methodist Church in Goldston

Each church agreed to support CORA with .5% of its annual operating budget.

Jay Olsen, Jim Hinkley, and Dave Shenton drafted the by-laws constitution, and assisted pro bono by Ed Holmes, a Pittsboro attorney, established CORA as a nonprofit 501-C-3 entity. Other organizers as the pantry began included Bob Foster, Peter Bell, Jean Reeves and Hugo Lopez from the Iglesia United Methodist Church in Siler City . Diversity was encouraged from the beginning.

A referral system (referrals from social service agencies, local churches, and law enforcement organizations) was set up at the start, in order to address concerns about the underlying causes of hunger in each family who used CORA¹s services.

An interesting story was told about a family who graciously refused canned food because they were living in an automobile and had no way to open the cans.
The response by CORA volunteers Jay Olsen and Marye Kloster was to stock
a desk drawer with can openers...

By summer of 1993, the CORA's need exceeded its donations of food and funds, and Dave Shenton put out a call to the eight founding churches. Over $20,000 was given to CORA, stabilizing the organization and enabling it to purchase two certificates of deposit the next year. The first CROP Walk was held in 1990. When CORA's leaders called the CROP organization to inquire, they suggested getting in touch with Susan Cafferty, the pastor at Siler City UMC, who had organized CROP Walks several times in Alamance County . The Walk alternated between Pittsboro and Siler City each year, and occasionally Goldston was a site as well.

Sometime in the mid-90¹s CORA donated $1500 (of $1 million) towards a new NC food Bank warehouse in Raleigh, and Jay Olsen was the Director of Operations there for two years. The Durham branch of the NC Food Bank opened in 1994, and is currently the site where CORA shops for its Food Bank food.

TEFAP (The Emergency Federal Assistance Program ) was originally run through the Department of Social Services, and at one point CORA and the NC Food Bank lobbied (with a pro bono lobbyist) for direct delivery to pantry sites. Thus TEFAP food (at no cost to CORA) began arriving directly in Pittsboro in about 1996
(at Southern States), and onsite at our pantry in 1999. Below are statistics to indicate the growth of need & service at CORA:

Several important announcements will
be made over the
next few months.
Be sure to check back
on a regular basis.