• Free tiny pantries are stocked by the community and feature items like non-perishable foods, diapers, toothbrushes even gift cards.

HASLETT - Mike Karl knows the streets of Downtown Lansing all too well. He was homeless for six months between 2003 and 2004. That experience led him to create Cardboard Prophets, a non-profit that focuses on outreach in Lansing.

“We wanted to try to bring the community together for real change and for people that are either homeless or hungry,” said Mike Karl, President of Cardboard Prophets. “We just want to give an opportunity for the community to try things and show them how they can help people.”

Karl’s non-profit eventually led to the creation of Free Tiny Pantry. Free Tiny Pantry is mobile pantries placed throughout different cities all across Michigan that give people an opportunity to help people in need, while giving people in need the food and supplies they might do without, otherwise.

“The food insecurities that we have here in Michigan, the different programs that have been cut—it’s just hard for people to get food and sometimes there’s requirements that they can’t meet,” Karl said. “There’s long lines [and] there’s very few mobile pantries in the city, so we wanted to do something different. We wanted to make sure that people could get food with no questions asked.”

Various items can be found in free tiny pantries, including non-perishable foods, diapers, toothbrushes and even gift cards.

Free tiny pantries are roughly two-feet tall and one-foot deep. Seventeen of them were funded and built by people in the community at Home Depot in Okemos in early February. They’re easy to spot while driving down the road because they are painted bright yellow.

“We picked the color yellow because yellow is soothing—it’s love,” Karl said. “It’s a giving color and it stands out, so [people] can see it when they’re driving by.”

The upkeep on free tiny pantries is simple. Community members network on the project’s Facebook page, posting updates when free tiny pantries are low, overflowing or in need of specific items.

With five active free tiny pantries in Lansing, one newly installed location in Haslett, nine other locations in surrounding areas and three free tiny pantries on the way, Karl doesn’t plan on stopping until he “can’t walk anymore.”

“I would like to see a tiny pantry in every city to help fight the food insecurities in each town, because no matter where you go, hunger is an issue,” Karl said. “If we can combat it as a community, we can help food banks that might be struggling; we can help the community and fill that gap.”