Posted in Food Bank of SJ South Jersey by .
Collette Olsen had been looking for someplace to volunteer since she and her husband moved to South Jersey. Her kids had grown up and volunteering in schools just wouldn’t be the same. She could have found a job, but to Collette “volunteering is better.”
Then one day in October last year, Collette saw Chef Aaron McCargo, Jr., talking about Food Bank of South Jersey on ABC’s daytime show The Chew. Until then, hunger had not really been on her radar, and especially not food banking. She, like most people, thought of soup kitchens when she heard ‘hunger.’ In fact, Collette had no idea about the severity of the hunger crisis right here in South Jersey and the United States. At least not until she came to FBSJ for her volunteer orientation.
With a good deal of guest service and administrative experience in her repertoire, Collette excels in multiple areas. She is not only great with people, but she is also efficient and happy with office work. Since joining the FBSJ family as a volunteer, Collette has done food stamp outreach, conducts a ton of data entry weekly, helps with mailings, and had a lot of fun working at the Penns Grove Hope Mobile distribution.
At the Mac Off in January, Collette walked up to Chef McCargo and thanked him for bringing her attention to a cause that could use her help.
The willingness to drive the distance and dedicate herself 3 and 4 days a week to helping at FBSJ is what earned Collette recognition as March Volunteer of the Month. And now she is hooked. In the past, she’s done a lot of work with the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Volunteering at FBSJ is more fulfilling, she tells me, because what she’s doing has a direct impact and really makes a difference. The thanks she receives from people she helps brightens her face as she talks. And she talks to her family back in Chicago about the work she does with FBSJ often. When she described the reason her holiday donation was going to the food bank, she inspired her sister who also donated.
Especially having grown up & lived in homes where hunger was more like a tummy rumble followed by eating a snack, Collette says, “I can’t fathom children and families without food in our country.”
Posted in Events South Jersey by .
Click the logo for details
Join Team Food Bank of South Jersey on Saturday, April 21st, for the annual South Jersey Walk Against Hunger.
Registration opens at 8:30am, Cherry Hill Health & Racquet Club staff will lead warm-up exercises, and then we’re off at 10am on a 3 (or 1.5) mile saunter through Haddon Township’s Newton Lake Park!
Dunkin Donuts will be serving up some breakfasty snacks. Our very own Healthy Living Initiative team will be there to do a healthy snack demo. Local mascots, gyms, yoga centers, health orgs, and community supporters have signed on to take part in the SJ Walk Against Hunger 2012. There is strength in numbers in the struggle against hunger, and our numbers will be out en force this Saturday.
Among our numbers will be the Haddon Township mayor and commissioners. Also present will be the staff from former Eagles offensive lineman Tra Thomas’s 7 Deuce Sports fitness training center. Rumor has it Mr. Thomas will be there himself and share a few encouraging words to get us all going.
Walkers help raise funds that will enable FBSJ to carry out its mission (last year raised over $5,000), and they increase awareness of hunger in South Jersey with their presence at this event. They also promote healthy activities like walking.
According to the Mayo Clinic, walking can strengthen back muscles, slim your waist, is easy on joints, can strengthen your bones, lower blood pressure, allow time with family & friends, shape/tone your legs and butt, cut cholesterol, reduce risk of heart disease, diabetes, & more! Whew!
We hope to see you there at the 2012 South Jersey Walk Against Hunger. Your donations to Food Bank of South Jersey aid South Jersey.
SJ WAH 2011
Posted in Food Food Bank of SJ by .
By: Michael Sicinski
The experience this past Friday at the Camden Children’s Garden couldn’t have been better. We recorded our second cooking demonstration in their kitchen using fresh kale that was just picked. I prepared two recipes using the kale:
Sauteed Kale, Fresh Radishes, Almonds, and Cranberries
Kale and Caramelized Onion Quesadilla
Both recipes were delicious and perfect for the home cook who has minimal experience with kale preparation. Alex LaBant did an excellent job filming the video and taking the pictures.
I personally have very minimal experience with gardening, but with the help of Mike Devlin and Valerie Frick, the co-founders of the Children’s Garden, I learned how easy it is to grow in South Jersey. Val and Mike shared a wealth of information about growing kale. Mike told me about loamy soil and how it is ideal for growing things such as kale, spinach, leeks, and root vegetables. He also demonstrated how to harvest kale and showed that it is not necessary to kill the whole plant. It is better just to clip the leaves from the bottom of the plant, and it will continue to grow throughout most of the year. I also learned that kale thrives in cooler temperatures. Kale keeps growing most of the year and the leaves can be harvested regularly. This is great to know, I am actually think of starting my own kale bed.
Posted in Events Food Bank of SJ by .
The pace at FBSJ has been steady the last few months. In the past we’ve seen a major slowdown of orders and donations after the year end holidays. This wasn’t because need suddenly dropped off so much as the holiday spirit went into hibernation.
Need remains high, particularly these days with a crawling economic recovery. The growing FBSJ network of pantries/kitchens and programs like KidzPack, School Pantry, Hope Mobile, etc., reflects this consistent need. Jeff, Warehouse Manager, reported at yesterday’s staff meeting that operations staff have pulled 45% more orders in the first quarter of this year than in Jan.-March 2011 (with fewer staff).
And the incoming donations–of time & money–demonstrate that we are doing our job with some greater degree of success: Our communications & mail pieces, policy positions, and operations are raising awareness in the community of the need to feed and fund these efforts.
In addition, FBSJ has enhanced it’s Co-op program. Food procurement manager Mike takes feedback from agencies, Programs staff, and Operations staff to develop food purchases regularly. These purchases consist of staples and foods that we do not receive through government programs like TEFAP & SFPP. The advantage of Co-op food is that FBSJ makes it available to agencies on a menu and can charge up to 25 cents per pound for it. So Co-op is a way to make some money back, and the items have really been moving.
Staff spent the afternoon in the warehouse
Since the March staff meeting, at least 6 agencies have joined the FBSJ network. 12 FBSJ employees also took the ServSafe certification course and passed the exam! In future, more employees will take this training in food handling. Of most interest to folks outside the food bank, however, is that Food Bank of South Jersey breaks ground to begin construction that will add 20,000 square feet of space to our facility on April 9th!
That’s less than a week away, and we’ll still be operating during this estimated 5-month project. Follow the progress at the FBSJ website.
Also coming up are the South Jersey Walk Against Hunger, on April 21st, and Stamp Out Hunger, on May 12th. And later this week FBSJ is hosting the next planning meeting for Students Change Hunger, the statewide student food drive competition that kicks off in the fall. Lots of things in the works, all very exciting. Stay tuned for more info!
Mar 12
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What’s Up With Nutrition
Some cool stuff for everyone to read in this Nutrition Month Wednesday’s Reads…
1. First up, did you see Alex’s post about Marion Nestle guest speaking at Drexel a couple weeks ago? Nestle is a food activist & an academic who decries a lot of the food industry’s behavior. Check out Alex’s thoughtful reflections and leave him some comments with your ideas about our food predicament. Marion Nestle at Drexel U.
2. Next I give you further suggestion that U.S. citizens are perhaps too lazy for their own good. What do I mean? Well, in a very small Chicago study of low-income families, results showed inconvenience was a major hindrance to eating healthful, fresh produce. More than cost, convenience influenced whether families ate the recommended daily servings of fruits & veggies. Also: grocery store experience.
So, first, the study only looked at 6 area neighborhoods. Second, “access” is probably defined better in the contents of the study (I only had time to read the abstract), but grocery stores typically have frozen or canned produce even when they don’t offer great fresh produce. And these products take less time to prepare. Nonetheless, here’s food for thought about aspects of the American food system that influence how we eat with or without our noticing. Why We Don’t Eat Our Vegetables.
3. Earlier this week, I attended a hunger chat on Twitter that included Ellie Krieger (nutritionist working First Lady Michelle Obama on “Let’s Move” campaign), the USDA, White House, and Feeding America. The point was “to learn about and advocate for programs and policies that aim to alleviate the nutrition challenges faced by the nearly 49 million Americans struggling with hunger.” This was the first time I’d followed a Twitter chat, and I have to say this one was as disorganized and disappointing as expected. A handful of people were following the event with hashtag #BetterFood, but the chat celebs said fairly little with even less substance. What else is to be expected from a cyber free-for-all? Nonetheless, I dug up some cool websites.
Here at FBSJ we talk about our goal to distribute nutrient-dense foods. During the hunger chat, someone tweeted a link to a list of top nutrient-dense foods! Follow the link to find out what New Hope 360 says are the25 Healthiest Nutrient Dense Foods.
4. Another spiffy URL I found during the hunger chat directed viewers to a smart vignette that focuses on food shopping on a budget. Some cynics may think food-insecure families are ignorant or careless. Yvette’s story is just one of thousands that demonstrates the concern and foresight many of these famiies have. They try to provide the healthiest food they can to their families no matter waht the budget is.
5. Food stamps supplement family budgets and enable many families to purchase more produce than they might otherwise. Across the country, more and more farmers markets accept food stamps these days. And the more progress we make in breaking the stigmas attached to the food stamp program and people who use it, the more efficient and acceptable food stamps will become–granting qualified families & individuals buying power denied them by circumstance. To learn if you qualify for food stamps & how useful they can be, you can visit the USDA’s SNAP Ed-Connection site. You can also call the FBSJ Food Stamp Outreach Coordinator, Sandi, at 856.662.4884 x144. She can help you with the application process!
Posted in Programs by .
We are winding down for the weekend here. It’s rather quiet in the office, and the warehouse doesn’t seem swamped. The sun is out, allergies are running rampant, and I want to take the rest of this morning to tell you about some progress we’ve made that I (Erin) am very happy about.
When FBSJ started, it was way smaller and located in Camden. These days our operations are too big for the 45,000 square foot warehouse we inhabit in Pennsauken. On April 9th FBSJ will be breaking ground for a 20,000 square foot expansion. It’ll take several months, and we will probably be readjusting to our new size for a long time after.
When an org starts out small like FBSJ did, sometimes just getting things done is all that seems to matter. It’s not always easy to project into the future how information and materials will need to be adapted for growing communications, operations, etc. For instance, it was okay when contact info for each agency in the FBSJ network was entered by volunteers, sometimes with personal phone numbers listed under a main contact heading. At the time, only 2 FBSJ people regularly accessed this info. Marie & Kristin are the people who work with our agencies. When anyone needed to contact agencies, when the warehouse received a refrigerator that was too small for us but might be of use to an agency, when people contacted FBSJ needing food assistance– All those instances ended up with Kristin or Marie.
But as we grew and need increased, more people working here were getting calls from people asking for help with food. More people showed up here mistaking it for a food pantry with individual-sized portions to distribute to them. It wasn’t reasonable for all these requests to be directed only to Kristin and Marie. Thus began a epic journey.
The journey started in fall of 2011. I was working at the front desk and was often interrupting Kristin & Marie asking for referrals for individuals needing food. It didn’t make sense to keep handling Requests for Food (RFF) this way. No one has access to the database with agency contact info. And no one else knew the agencies and their managers well enough to use the info anyway. FBSJ can’t give away personal cell phone numbers that are incidentally listed as the main contact for an agency.
Kristin, Marie, and I talked about what information people needed. Of course they would need agency names and addresses. Agencies are required to distribute food at least once a month, though many do more often, so people would need to know which days and times they could get food. The majority of agencies are run by religious organizations whose offices have short or odd hours. Not only that, but most agencies are run by volunteers and sometimes church staff don’t know much about the pantry. So people needed a phone number, a name to ask for, when to call, and when they could expect a return phone call if they didn’t reach anyone initially. Some people don’t want to call ahead, but they still need to know what paperwork to bring along. Based on the source of the food they distribute, agencies are required to keep record of forms showing qualification to receive the food (e.g. ID, income, address).
Once we had that nailed down, I developed a spreadsheet of the contact info we had and each category of info we needed. I came up with a script to guide people who’d be collecting the info. We needed to speak to managers for each agency and gather the data from scratch. We nailed down instructions about whom to speak to, not leaving messages, being clear about the data we needed, etc. We needed to record which county each was located in, in order to sort the list. And then finally the collection could begin. Wilma worked with volunteers for weeks making calls and filling in our spreadsheet.
Once we had most of the data, it needed to go on our website. So much was going on that there wasn’t time to get an interactive map going. In January, I moved into my new, full-time Communications position. I created a merge document for each county in alphabetical order by city. After saving the PDFs, it was time to upload them to the website.
The plan is for this public info to be updated 3-4 times a year to keep it current. The calls will have to be made again to confirm and update the data. The new info will have to be run through the merge documents, saved appropriately, and uploaded to the website. So I created a document that instructs on how to do this step by step.
And now that we had a master list of public information for each agency, Kristin & Marie were able to create a better process for handling RFFs. Now we have a standard process for responding to walk-ins, phone calls, and e-mails from people seeking assistance. No longer is the burden entirely on Kristin & Marie; now each employee can access the agency data and give people referrals. And we are all doing it the same way.
I don’t think the epic journey has ended yet. I am working on a list this week of places that might find the agency listings useful. Sometimes we get calls from mayors offices or schools who are trying to assist an individual. After teh initial list distribution, we’ll build a list of the organizations who respond that they want to receive listing updates.
Next we will probably start tracking these RFF calls we get. That information may turn out to be helpful in identifying areas of greater focus on our part. And now we are way better at helping people in this one way. This blog entry may have been tedious, if you made it this far, but I wanted to show how much cooperation and effort things that seem clean & simple can take. And it’s really exciting!
Posted in Food Bank of SJ by .
Robyn C. Lockett always asks people how they’re doing when she works at Hope Mobile distributions. After attending a record number of distributions in February, FBSJ staff chose Robyn as Volunteer of the Month.
Originally from Philly, Robyn came to volunteer at FBSJ after serving food from a soup kitchen in the city. A mother of 3 and married to loving husband Mark, she now lives in New Jersey and wanted to find an opportunity to do more, closer to home.
As a Hope Mobile volunteer, Robyn helps to unload, unwrap, and organize the distribution food. She likes to organize the food groups grocery store-style so clients can ‘shop’ for what they want. Talking to people and asking about their day is really gratifying to Robyn, who says, “When you greet someone with a smile, they smile back!”
Robyn’s husband came along with her to receive her Volunteer of the Month recognition last week. Mark had nothing but praise for his inspirational & caring wife, whom he described as “such a dynamic person.” She is so inspirational, in fact, that not only has her husband started accompanying Robyn to Hope Mobile distributions, but their daughter has also begun tagging along!
When asked how hunger has impacted her, Robyn explained that her volunteer work is meaningful to her because she sees that anybody can be in a situation needing food no matter their income or social status. It is clear Robyn is kind & humble, she never expected to be informed that she was February’s Volunteer of the Month. “It’s nice to be recognized, but I don’t do it to be recognized,” Robyn said.
It’s apparent how sincerely Robyn feels about volunteering. She told us she hopes to start doing even more and become familiar with our warehouse. It’s almost hard to believe; she already leaves one Saturday Hope Mobile distribution a few minutes early to drive over to the Camden distribution later that day!
When she came to talk to us about her volunteering experiences, Robyn even brought 75 pounds of food to donate.
By Michael Sicinski
With all the time I have been spending in schools this year, I have noticed a lot of new foods being offered in the cafeterias. I also notice what foods the children are actually eating. I see some of the school’s making a great effort to offer healthy options such as natural fruit juices, whole wheat cereal, fresh fruit or veggies with a dip, or even steamed vegetables to go along side of the main lunch. This is a huge improvement when I think about the limited options that were available when I was in school. Parents play the biggest role in making sure that their children take advantage of the healthy options that are more available in NJ schools today. If parents prepare healthy dinners, for example, with lean meats like chicken breast and tasty vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, their children will be more familiar with healthy foods and choose them at school.
Meals prepared at home for dinner will make a difference in children’s choices when they are at school. When children are exposed to fruits and vegetables at home, those foods won’t be unfamiliar to them when they are in the school cafeteria.
It’s also important that parents eat the way they want their children to eat. A child’s eating habits start in their home kitchen. It’s hard to expect kids to make healthy choices at school if they drink soda and eat junk foods at home and see their parents doing the same.
The more time I spend with kids in the classroom during our Cooking Matters classes, the more I find that they really enjoy eating meals that they helped prepare. Letting kids help in the kitchen really helps them develop better eating habits.
For parents needing to put a healthy dinner together in a pinch, I recommend a light dinner such as a healthy chicken salad on whole wheat bread with a simple tossed green salad on the side. This is good dinner for the kids to help you with, and extra could be a healthy lunch the next day. The recipe below is using a whole roasted chicken. It would be a helpful job for a child pull the meat from the bones.
Low-Fat Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 1/3 cup low fat mayonnaise
- ½ roasted chicken, skinned, meat removed from the bone, and roughly chopped (about 1 ½ cups meat)
- 1 stalk celery, chopped
- 3 tablespoons chopped scallions
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Keep refrigerated. Serve on your favorite bread or on top of a green salad.
Tips:
You can use boneless chicken if you like just be sure the cooked meat is equal to 1 ½ cups.
You could also substitute dry thyme and dry chives, just use half of the amount.
Ms. Dolores, as she is endearingly addressed in our Cooking Matters courses, is quite the veteran when it comes to Food Bank of South Jersey programming. Not only is she involved with many other projects, but she has served as Class Manager for *five* of our classes. For those of you that are not familiar with Cooking Matters, it is the six-week nutrition education course (designed by Share Our Strength) that the FBSJ uses as a means to promote healthy living. The program utilizes cooking as an interactive platform to teach people how to create nutritious, affordable, and delicious meals. In our celebration of National Nutrition Month, the FBSJ’s Healthy Living Initiative team asked Ms. Dolores a few questions about how Cooking Matters has impacted her life.
Healthy Living Inititiave (HLI): How did you become involved with Cooking Matters?
I became involved with a Cooking Matters class after I was informed about the program at the orientation meeting for new volunteers at the Food Bank.
Have you learned anything new about nutrition or cooking by serving as a class manager?
The most valuable lesson I learned besides eating more nutritious foods was teaching young children the proper and safe use of kitchen utensils.
As someone that has served in several Cooking Matters classrooms, which is your favorite group to work with?
I enjoy working with all of the different groups, but my favorite group is the class for families. As a grandmother I enjoy watching the interactions between the different family members as they work together to prepare a nutritious meal.
March is National Nutrition Month. What does nutrition mean to you?
Nutrition means preparing an inexpensive, delicious and healthy meal for my family that supplies the nourishment they need for good health and mental stamina.
What’s your favorite healthy recipe to make at home?
My favorite healthy recipe to prepare at home is a turkey-veggie burrito. I like it because it is so easy to add meat, beans, fresh vegetables, cheese, and salad greens to a tortilla that even my granddaughter can prepare this nutritious meal.
What do you like to do with your time when you’re not volunteering with a Cooking Matters program?
When I’m not volunteering in the Cooking Matters program I like using my free time to support other programs that assist needy families in my community.
