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Interfaith Food Pantry
of the Oranges
Helping those in need in Orange & East Orange, NJ
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A proud member of the MEND network of food pantries
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Client choice: the way of IFPO's future
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Ravioli or mac & cheese? |
To get ready to go to client choice, we have been doing a few '"choice" selections for a number of weeks now. We've learned a lot about what our clients really prefer as they've been given choices between food items like canned peas (a surprising winner) or green beans; applesauce (not a popular choice) or mixed canned fruit; rice (major favorite) or pasta; canned tuna or salmon or chicken; mac & cheese or canned ravioli. This knowledge has already impacted our food ordering, the stock on our shelves (as clients decline food they do not want or need), and personalized our clients' Pantry experience.
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Once we move to full client choice, we expect to still make a (much smaller) number of bags each week, for clients who prefer to "grab and go" and other special situations. Our volunteers will still be totally engaged, but we'll be able to offer opportunities for a lot more client interaction. We're assured by agencies running full client choice pantries that once we are fully up and running our clients will get out in the same time or even faster than before, but with choices more aligned to their own desires. There will be less food waste as clients get what they prefer, and we will know to order choices that are more popular rather than just guess what our clients would like. We'll be able to encourage more healthy choices (for example, perhaps offering a 2-for-1 special so clients choose whole grain products) and offer more client food education.
Right now, our pantry gives the same amount of food to each client, regardless of whether they are a single individual or a family group. We hope to move to a system of choice based on family size that will serve our clients more equitably.
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IFPO BOARD VISITS A NYC CLIENT CHOICE PANTRY
On April 16, six members of our Board visited the
Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries
pantry in NYC to see how a full client choice pantry worked in action. We brought bananas and oranges to give out to their clients in appreciation for their allowing us to view and learn about their operations, and we volunteered at the pantry.
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At the NYC grain station, clients chose between cereal, crackers, rice or pasta.
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IFPO's Debbie Goodman doing intake in NYC. The amount of food clients received was based on their family size. Unlike the IFPO, clients in NYC at the pantry we visited were limited to one pantry visit a month. [But see the discussion below: most IFPO clients visit our pantry only once or twice a month].
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Fun from our Teen Board on Sunday, May 22
Last year's event, which included 4 musical acts and a comedian, raised $7,000 for the IFPO! This year's event features a series of student musical groups, including Danny Lifson and the Dukes, vocalists Erin Mooney, Tyler Friedman, and Sammi Powell, Millburn High School's Soulfege a capella group, Newark Academy's Diminuendo, and a Newark Academy jazz combo group. While the musical acts play throughout the event, everyone can enjoy arts and crafts activities, face painting, flash tattoos, cookie decorating and a cake-walk. Attendees can also look forward to pizza, pretzels, donuts, cotton candy and perhaps a few other delicious surprises.
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HELP US PROVIDE FRESH PRODUCE:
We love providing our clients with fresh produce. As you plant your summer garden, why not plant an extra row and donate the proceeds to the IFPO? And, if summer travel or other plans prevent you from getting and using your CSA (community supportive agriculture) share on a given week, we'd be happy to distribute it to our clients. Contact Janet Schwamm ([email protected]) for pickup arrangements.
L
ast Farmer's Market Season, we received CSA shares that had not been picked up from
Farm & Fork Society
at the Millburn Farmer's Market. Farm & Fork's CSAs support local and sustainable farmers. We're delighted that Farm & Fork has fundraised from their members to provide added produce to us this season. If you might be able to occasionally pick up this produce for us on Friday afternoons around 2:45, contact Janet Schwamm ([email protected]).
DRIVERS WANTED
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We often need help picking up donated goods at specific times, or purchasing produce at The Farmers Market on Route 10 on Tuesdays; send an email to [email protected]
if you'd like to be on a backup list for those jobs.
SPEAK/WRITE ANOTHER LANGUAGE? We're particularly in need of volunteers who speak/write Creole, French and Spanish. Please send an email to Cyndy Wyatt at [email protected] if you might be able
to help translate for our clients.
And as we move towards client choice, we'd love to be able to create signs in several languages. Even an hour of your time will be helpful! Email Lisa Goldberg Ozer [email protected].
HELP THE SOUP KITCHEN AT THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY! Our host, the Church of the Epiphany, runs a lunchtime soup kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Volunteers are needed to shop, cook at the Church, bring prepared food and serve lunch. Contact Jodi Cooperman [email protected] if you'd like to become involved.
WE ALWAYS NEED BAGS!
Even if you can't join us on a Wednesday, we can always use your brown paper grocery bags and yellow Shoprite plastic bags. Drop them off at your congregational food drop-off site or contact one of our
Board members to see how you can get them to us.
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What's it like to volunteer at IFPO? One volunteer's story
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Gratitude for a truly historic donation
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Edrington donation supports IFPO for two months!
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We went fishing - thanks to JAG Physical Therapy
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Special donation enhances our clients holiday food!
John Gallucci, Jr., CEO of
JAG Physical therapy, wanted to do something special for our clients. We were thrilled when he agreed to donate funds to enable us to purchase 2 pound bags of tilapia that we distributed to over 200 clients a few days before Good Friday/Easter!
Mike Evangelist, a Partner at JAG, as well as Amy Oliver from JAG, spent time at Pantry a few days before Easter helping us bag groceries before they handed out the fish. We used our fresh vegetable grant that week to purchase lemons and broccoli to complement the fish. Special thanks to Mark Wyckoff of Wakefern (Shoprite's Bloomfield store) for working with us to make this happen!
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Investors Bank supports the IFPO
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Investors Bank supports initiatives in the arts, education, youth development, affordable housing, and health and human services.
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Play at IFPO supports child development
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Element of Play from worldwideorphans.com now comes regularly to Pantry to support children who come to the IFPO with their parents.
Element of Play brings a mobile toy library to play with the children and spread the word about their program promoting early childhood development through play at the Orange Public Library. A growing body of research shows a link between play and the development of cognitive and social skills that are prerequisites for learning more complex concepts as children get older.
We're providing hea
lthy snacks to the attending children, as well as to those coming to the program being run at the Orange Public Library. Read Dr. Jane Aronson's article about our program in the Huffington Post.
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Judi Colton and IFPO Board member Kristin Sterlng packing healthy snacks
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We learned about this program through our involvement in a community coalition for a healthier Orange funded by the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Healthy New Jersey coalition.
Learn More.
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How Meditation is Helping Fight Food Insecurity
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IFPO volunteer Anne Sussman of the Mindfulness Meeting Place is strongly committed to fighting food insecurity. Anne donates a portion of her earnings to the IFPO regularly, and asks clients to bring canned food donations to her classes. Our Diaper Bank clients were thrilled to receive baby food Anne brought us from Girl Scout
Troop #
40235
, Jefferson school, Union. These scouts did service projects centered around providing food for the hungry in our local area while working on their bronze awards.
And on April 7, Anne led IFPO leaders in a session on Introduction to Meditation and Mindfulness. If we seem calmer and more focused lately, we are likely more mindful!
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That as a member agency of the Community Foodbank of NJ, we
can procure food at very reduced cost? When you're distributing
thousands of pounds a food a month,
that very reduced cost makes a huge difference. For example, we recently purchased 1200 jars of peanut butter
at $1.24 each (almost $1500); that same purchase at retail would cost over $2400.
Recently, our clients were able to enjoy
Grey Poupon mustard that we snagged for only
8
cents a jar due to a donation to the CFB!
That April was National Volunteer Month?
Executives from the Community Foodbank of NJ, including new CEO Debra Vizzi, came to see our volunteer team in action on April 27. We were delighted to show them how we service clients (246 that day!), have a chance to exchange ideas and information, and mutually discuss ways we might improve the process.
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The CFB Executive Team at IFPO.
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Cyndy Wyatt explains our intake process to Julienne Cherry, director of agency relations for the CFB.
That most of our clients only visit the IFPO once a month?
Unlike some other pantries, the IFPO does not limit how many times in a month a
registered client can utilize our services.
Our clients only utilize our services when they truly need them: for the first quarter of 2016, only 25% of our clients came every week. We also saw from 50 - 70 "emergency guests" each of the first three months of the year. Emergency guests are either one time visitors to our Pantry or those who are not yet registered since they haven't come to us three times.
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That during the cold months, our clients are able to check in and wait for food in the beautiful Sanctuary of our host, the Church of the Epiphany?
We are so grateful to the Church for providing space for IFPO and for working with us to help our clients. Clients often are already lined up for groceries by 8:00 when we begin to arrive at Pantry, even though our first bags are rarely distributed before 9:30 am.
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Clients lining up outside the Church.
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Our check-in team does an amazing job week after week checking in as many as 245 clients!
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| Waiting to be escorted to the social hall for groceries. |
That we were part of the MEND (Meeting Emergency Needs with Dignity)
Evening of Gratitude and Celebration that honored Rich Durante, Kings President and COO, for their 20 year support of this coalition of pantries?
MEND's 16 member pantries, representing a coalition of 39 churches, synagogues and temples representing a diversity of faiths, fed more than 107,000 children, women and men in 2015. We were delighted to be able to share in a recent donation from Goya Foods to MEND, including juice, cookies, vegetables, fruit, beans, canned meat, pasta and rice.
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***For the 100th day of school, the kindergarten students of Glenwood Elementary School in Short Hills brought in cereal and stacked them to see what "100" looks like. Our clients were the lucky recipients of Lucky Charms, Cheerios and more when the counting was done. "Real" cereal is a very big treat for our clients; with the cost of a 12 ounce box of cereal easily soaring over $3, it's not something our clients generally can purchase. If you'd like to do a cereal drive for us we'd be thrilled!
We are very grateful for:
---boxes and boxes of soup from Deerfield Elementary School. Their fabulous community service project tied into the Super Bowl helped our clients stay warm this
winter;
---over 60 bags of food (including lots of pasta used momentarily as noisemakers to drown out the name of Haman, the wicked prime minister of a Persian kingdom) from the Purim to Pesach Food Drive of Golda Och Academy.
***Preschool classes from Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel and Congregation Beth El have visited IFPO on recent Wednesdays. Our students learn about hunger in their communities and the work of the IFPO. They help us pack bags of food and distribute food to clients!
IFPO Advisory Board member Shayna Schmidt
talks to Beth El Preschoolers.
TSTI preschoolers at IFPO.
*** Terrific teens from St. Rose of Lima volunteered at the IFPO during their winter break.
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***Regan Smollen, granddaughter of Carpenter Club John, sent birthday money to us after her December volunteer experience at the IFPO.
***Ben Bratter distributed flyers about food insecurity and collected food and toiletries which he donated to IFPO as a mitzvah project.
***We were thrilled to receive donations in honor of Jake Garfinkle, who asked that contributions be made to designated charities instead of accepting payment when he performs genealogy research!
***So happy to have Hannah Levine, now at Morristown Beard, and Thomas Easterbrook, now at The Pennington School, come to volunteer during their respective Spring Breaks. Hannah and Thomas used to come to Pantry regularly with Winston School last year, and spent a recent day with us helping out, including creating snack bags for the children who will be part of our program run by Elements of Play.
***Our March diaper Moms got bags full of love and child-friendly goodies prepared by the students of Temple B'nai Jeshurun's Rabbi Barry H. Greene Early Childhood Center.
***Cub Scout Pack 1 of Christ Church of Short Hills held a food drive for the IFPO, and then came to Pantry on April 3 to help stock our shelves.
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Elijah Goldberg, son of Melissa Goldberg of Farm & Fork Society, has started Generation Zero: Working to Reduce Hunger in New Jersey as a mitzvah project.
Funds raised will go directly to purchase produce that will donated to IFPO and the food pantry of our MEND partner, Our Lady of Sorrows.
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