Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted numerous sectors of society, which
led to a worsened state of nationwide concerns, including poverty, joblessness, and hunger. As a
means to help and alleviate the woes experienced by Filipinos, numerous community pantries
emerged, primarily advanced by Ana Patricia Non in Maginhawa Street, Quezon City. To have a
better grasp of such a unique phenomenon, this inquiry explored how the Maginhawa community
pantry, as the pioneering initiative that led a “social movement,” influenced the psychosocial
behavior of the other Filipino community pantry organizers in the National Capital Region. The
community pantry organizers were also asked about their perception of Ana Patricia Non and her
actions, the motivations for their participation in the community pantry movement, and their take
on the Bayanihan and the social movement characteristics of community pantries. The study has
seven participants categorized into two: (1) individuals or organizational representatives who
established their pantry initiative and (2) social movement experts who also enacted a
community pantry - all of which were selected through the purposive sampling technique. The
data collected went through a reflexive thematic analysis that goes together with an exploratory
phenomenological approach while, at the same time, utilizing an inductive analysis along with
semantic and latent coding strategies. The results show that (1) Ana Patricia Non's initiative was
caused by interplaying factors and that her actions generally earned positive and favorable
responses, (2) the community pantry organizers were motivated due to the influence of Ana
Patricia Non, the “giving back to the community” attitude that they possess, and their first-hand
observation of Filipino struggles amid the pandemic, (3) the Bayanihan within community pantries is marked by collectivism as perceived by the participants, and (4) the spread of
community pantries were propagated by diverse elements, and that it had an intrinsic social
commentary and social movement aspects, but lacked sustainability and long-term features.
