good evening i'm we go theme the welcome to another edition of focus on tonight my guest is dennis mccarthy from the trend there is soup kitchen dennis is the executive director of the task and we've been talking a lot about the organization and also we talked about poverty about how individuals individuals have fallen through the cracks as the poverty level has increased significantly increased the stretch of the needs and services of organizations like task the first dennis thanks for coming on the show it's been it's been great to see you i know you've you've announced that you're going to be retiring soon as executive director next august after nine years and you know how how how has the years gone so fast well thanks lou for having me it's great to be here and see you again after several years but yeah it's been quite a quite a trip these nine years in i've worked in the board of social services prior to come to soup kitchen for thirty four years and nine years here at task and the interesting thing is i always tell people i'm lucky guy i was lucky to have two great careers some people are unfortunate they don't even feel like to have want but it's what makes this so great is when i was at the board i was really involved a lot of policy things and the big picture let's the beauty of work and get task is right on the front line interacting with people every day and really seeing the results of the work you do right up front and you get immediate feedback on a on an ongoing basis let's go in there you've seen a lot of people over the years and i'm sure you know we'll talk more about the talk first just explain to the audience a little bit about how the test organization began ok well test has been around for i guess it's the thirty three years now it's started by some local religious people in the area that some some people were involved in different churches and some some community activists decided that they wanted to start feeding hungry people in trenton and they actually started in a church basement on south broad street and the first year they actually did forty thousand meals the first year just about and then they kind of lost that site and over the years task has had many many many different locations  got together with some of the past folks and dedicated some land on the street where we got a forty year lease on the land the city owns the land but we were able to build our own building there and we've been there actually on site there since nineteen eighty nine and it's worked out really well we did one building expansion about eight years ago and we're in the process of doing another one unfortunately when i took the job i said my goal was to see  go out of business unfortunately it's gone the other way and business is booming on for really fortunate so what types of services and programs those trend there is to kitchen provide right well let me just say our mission i think that will help me ok right into that you know most people know task for the food that we provide the meals that we provide and that is our primary mission to feed the hungry of those folks in the mercer county area it's not just trying to work and the second part of our mission is to help people gain skills to become self sufficient and the third part is to advocacy work for the needs of the hungry now as i said the first one is our primary goal we provide meals we do between six hundred thousand meals a day at our main location and are eleven satellite sites in fact we have two right here in princeton we have two in hamilton two two in hightstown and two here in princeton in addition to the sites we have in trenton and last year we did two hundred thousand meals total and this year it looks like we're going to probably do a similar number so that is our primary focus and i should mention that our meal is a hot nutritious meal that we prepare from scratch right in our kitchens it includes a protein a star each vegetable salad fruit bread dessert and juice and milk so it's a really balance full meal and that we pride ourselves in the fact that we cook each meal all one thousand meals every day from scratch now the second part of that is is as i said helping people get skills we have an outstanding adult education program it's received much recognition over the years the beauty of it is that most people get into our own lot of education programmers are sufi furred they're people are highly motivated they're generally speaking at least in their thirty's to forty's they're not kids and there are people where the traditional classroom kind of setting did not work for them for various reasons so in our program they sit down with a volunteer tutor one on want they get an individualized curriculum are coordinator what does a and then take when they first come in ok does an assessment find out what it is they're trying to accomplish and does this one on one tutoring and they work one on one with the tutor who's a volunteer as i said until a reader reach their goal some people are basic literacy some people have a high school diploma are looking to get some skills together that it takes some college classes or to get in training but most of the people are or studying to get a ged to try and get their high school equivalency diploma we have two wonderful arts programs one is called the eighty morris of tretton t pretty well know they have arts programs all the time in fact they do one every year right here at the presbyterian church they have a big show every year they do shows all over and they're very well known pretty well known and the interesting thing about is none of them have ever received any formal training they just kind of had some interest in art and they work together is it as a group and they they've done some beautiful things and and i want to tell folks if you ever get to come to task you'll see our dining room completely decorated with all their artwork it's beautiful brains of the whole place the other arts group is called share project they are performing artists they have a band called the funk test thinks until they perform around the county and they write plays in fact they have done some literary work in a process of writing a play now that they're going to be showing at the mill hope playhouse in trenton and they've done some video work that has received some national recognition fact they did one a couple years ago for cheerios and shoprite general mills where they got their pictures on the box of all the cheerios boxes that were laid in the area so they're pretty well known party is we have a computer teacher the teachers computer classes they have a fully equipped computer lab and so those are the highlights of the things we do as you can see it's a busy place we do things and obviously during the course of the year we do a lot of special events around the holidays and for children and families a lot of services you expanded i know especially in the last couple years what he sees going to happen in the future you know i know you like like the point i like to get across to folks is that there's a perception that the hunger issue is an urban issue or trance an issue it's really not it's a it's a global issue and then they're our own area it's the entire mercer county area we find the need and  as i said we have six satellite sites outside the city of trenton so my primary focus is always to try and find more ways to get food out to people that need it one of the things we've added in this past year is a program called seven hundred packing that we do in cooperation with the mercer street friends food bank what that is it's for children that get meals on the weekend as you know most kids during the school year get a school lunch and school breakfast or whatever but when friday comes what do they do well we work with them where with certain schools we provide a backpack full of food that they can take home for the weekend so that they have food on the weekend and have meals all week and the children do and that's going to provide meals we're going to probably do about fifty thousand meals on that program alone during the course of the year so that's our primary focus is is to do to get more ways to get food out that people are in need ok i know that as you mentioned there's a lot more people that are really in need of these type of services and i know we were talking earlier about a report that came out a little study that came out from the legal services poverty research institute understood read a little bit here it was in the star ledger and it talks about how poverty is untangled with education graduation rates and job creation workforce development wage stagnation incarceration housing affordability but one of the most important things is that the real index of poverty used to be a realistic benchmark of sixty thousand for a family of four means that you know most families are going to still encounter true poverty so their conclusion is that the poverty rate is actually closer to thirty percent as two point eight million of our neighbors including eight hundred thousand children can be classified as poor and they conclude also at the harvard research which made it clear that geography is the most important determining factor in whether a child will transition from poverty to the middle class and that geography is destiny so with those numbers which are actually alarming numbers you know thirty  percent it's not just urban areas as i said it's everybody that you see on the street the person that you could be passing by you know the real story and i know you've seen this increase over the years what do you think about that just well i can see it every day you know most people think of task as a providing services to homeless folk and is not the case it's only about twenty percent of the people to come to task are homeless and most of those folks have mental illness or some kind of substance abuse addiction problem but the other eighty percent are just regular folk many are senior citizens and believe it or not about seventy five percent of the people come the task having come of some sort or another they fall in that category of the low income of working poor fixed income that sort of thing so people have money they either have jobs and i say about thirty percent of people actually work somewhere so they're they're trying to make their ends of me in the problem is is that you know new jersey is not exactly the cheapest place to live and the study you just mentioned kind of pointed that out to wal mart like that that the figures they use are for the for federal poverty level like it's one size fits all for everybody we all know that new jersey's numbers  a little bit different than what was really maybe out in montana or someplace you know so yeah so that's what we find is people are really struggling and the interesting thing is since the recession of two thousand and eight there's a group that we call the newport or the or the newly needy however you would like to define that many people who are in the past view themselves as being the middle class or working class people who are really adversely affected by what happened into a way in and as you know the job market in new jersey still not great and many of those folks are still struggling we see many young families coming in as i said many more senior citizens coming in than we did in the past and man at least at least they don't have to worry but getting a meal that we can kind of give them something they can wear what little money they have they can use keep a roof over their head and do some other things they may need to do why should somebody who puts in an honest days work  in this type of situation but that's a loaded question that that is that is a political question a lot of ways i think and i think we've always asked ourselves that you know you would think it is in this country in this state that we all many of us have so much that if you do everything the way you're supposed to and play by the rules and go to work every day and do things the right way you should not have to struggle but unfortunately that's not the case it seems to me that you know there's many people working that are not making a living wage we know that for a fact a living wage right now in the new jersey area is probably at least fifteen dollars an hour and you know the minimum wage is half of that just a little more than half of that and there are many people that are not only working for low wages but they also have no benefits no sick days they have no health benefits and other things like that so that all kind of contributes to a situation that peep the this growing underclass however you want to define it and there is a group and i know there's been attempts you know to by the current government to take money away from you know what will housing you know not to raise the minimum wage to go after the earned income tax credit you know all as you said political issues but affecting real people and real lives real families and you see it in the education you know schools to deserved recognition but you know what contributions to the organization dennis have you been most proud of over the years well that was one of them obviously because that saved lives the children primarily with that just if i made that program what it was as we had recognized that every winter there were fires being started in homes because people had their electric and heat turned off and they were running these kerosene heaters and other kinds of alternative forms of heat and would start a fire in the house and children and families really being devastated oftentimes resulting in death so what we did at the board of social services with the early intervention program was primarily we looked at any case that we came across or any family came across that was having their utilities shut off as a preventive measure doing some some proactive work in those families to make sure that the fire was going to happen in that household and and which made me so proud as we did not lose one family the whole time or one child during the whole time we instituted that program but more recently i have to tell you as as i mentioned here earlier just going to task every day is just just so rewarding i tell people the thing i most is interacting with the patrons every day i try to make it a point to be out on the floor at meal time and talking with well interacting with people because people don't realize these i always say you know a fair private grace of god i could be be one of those folks coming in at the soup kitchen on a day you know and the some of the folks don't have a lot going for him but they're very polite you'll see the folks a fact you every time they get a meal many say a prayer before the and then we have conversation it's a social event  somebody asked me the other day like it was on monday i was talking with somebody so what are they talking about today i said today's monday they want to talk about yesterday's football games you know that kind and they want to talk about what happened in france over the weekend so so they just like you know everybody and i have to tell you that that just makes everything great love love going to work every day the great equalizer and have a truly she's truly yes that is that is the one of the things that i know that you have a lot of individuals who won't hear the time you know i believe weekly monthly basis and hopefully anybody who's watching the show you know who is fortunate enough to to be doing ok you know can get out on a monthly basis of the very least and you know help those you know services that you provide i think would be a great thing a very rewarding thing and a very you know interest intrinsically rewarding to any person who does it but more importantly it's the right thing you know so this area so i want to say that for the record so people know that in fact people personally that we have about thirty five hundred people a year to come to pass the volunteer some come with a company so we have students some come with their church some come as individuals and so those opportunities are there and anybody that wants to come volunteer we will accommodate now there are different things you can do some people like to serve a meal that's that's what a lot of people like we always can use more tutors as i mentioned in the adult education program that would pepper tutors all the tutors are volunteers they do one on one and they can do their commitment could be whatever they want to do some tutors come every day some come once a week some come once a month it just depends on what their time schedule would allow ok and we obviously will give people an orientation and we'll set them up it's not that complicated don't need a teaching degree or anything like that the tutor in our program we really set it  up and that's an hour and a half at a time ok so it's not that not that demanding on you and frankly most of the tutors find the talk about feedback positive feedback and there are working one on one with a person every day and we just had our annual ged celebration event a couple weeks ago and we were able to we do this every year we recognize our graduates and many of the tutors come and it's just an amazing amazing night so that's something a lot of people like you can volunteer in either one of the arts programs i mentioned they have they work with volunteers also so and then there are people that can do things offsite they don't necessarily  have to come to tast opposite out of a lot of people like to work within their own communities to do a food drive or hygiene products we always need like soap shampoo toothpaste deodorant those kinds of things because they like to do a drive within their out and pick them up ok we need to do that but a lot of people like to come to task and some folks like the come and distribute the items themselves the people which is fine we work with people and that is there is always an opportunity i would guess i should mention our website everything that i mentioned is pretty much on the website but they can always give us a call or send me an email through that website they can contact me and i think that to either have somebody come down show me around give a tour we're you know speak with them first be on the program about the search for a new executive director so what advice would you give the next executive director well first of all you have to have the heart for it i mean i don't know how else to say it's it's it's a place where there's like i said a lot of rewards there's also some times when the you know you find some struggles or i mean we're dealing with an urban area with some folks that some many have some issues but i just think if you have first of all you have to have some some i think knowledge of the trying to communicate in a sense i find that very valuable to be had because i know my way around and i know other people because we collaborate with a lot of the other non profits of the area so be important to know your way around the trenton community but individually you have to be pretty organized and you have to have some great people skills and i think you know some of the normal things you might expect they need to have you know you have to doubt to do a budget and those kinds of things but i think to me the most important thing is your heart and your mind being in the right place and you know be comfortable in an urban area and that and again i don't expect the next person the being me i mean they'll be who they are but i find for myself those are important things it is very important i think one of the things that you know a lot of people tend to talk about is you know the organizations and support that they get in various businesses and i guess you're the businesses that you receive support from are all basically local in mercer county mostly no actually we have we have not not some some national support to do it interesting you know i guess i should mention that we get virtually no government money so our our budget we raise every dollar from school my budgets two point eight million dollars a year and we raise every dollar from scratch every year except for a little bit of money we get from fema for food and a little bit of money we get from the one stop that we have for our daughter cation program for some of their students and all of that money we raise seventy percent come from individual donations people like were writing checks for one hundred bucks fifty bucks whatever no checks too small i should mention that and that's how we operate and that was that was the vision of the founders of task was to  to to stay away from government to be total my profs for lots of reasons number one reason was is our service is unconditional and the body that wants to come in and have a mill is welcome and if we were involved with a government program there would be some kinds of categorical kinds of programs we'd have to do paperwork you'd have to decide who can get it and can't get it so that was a i think the the greatest vision that they had was being unconditional and stay in private because we do have the opportunity and flexibility to provide any kind of services we feel that we'd like to give any foundations for yeah we have something like i said seventy percent individuals but the other thirty percent come from a mix churches foundations grants companies groups that sort of thing yes ok well i know we're we're going you know we're short on time but i want to just briefly if you could just go over past and where the locations are ok as we have people there sure are you in the area who are just sure all over sure our main site is is that seventy two and a half escher street in trenton ok now let me do the satellite week i said there were eleven of them and some of them are are not necessarily open to everybody like there we provide services to a day center at the rescue mission we there's a little circus group of high school students we provide meals for but the basic ones we have that are open to anybody is first baptist church on center street in trenton on monday tuesday and wednesday nights should typical park church on west state street in trenton on thursday nights the divine mercy church down adeline street is also on thursday nights and tuesday nights were at the holy apostles church in yard phil and we have monday and wednesday here in princeton monday is that the baptist church on john street i guess that alone john street right and right across from the robeson and wednesdays are at the methodist church on the corner van de venter and manifest right across the theater and we're in high town tonight and that's monday and thursday nights and it's at the methodist church on a presbyterian church on monday to methodist church on thursday and let me see i think i hit most of i think you got most of the guy thank you for all the work that you have done for pesca and also in all areas of social services and i think that as you get the kudos is in the months and weeks ahead a well deserved you know hopefully as time goes by we'll find some real solutions to some of the main causes and hopefully we'll be able to you know build a can and economy as much commentary that will allow us to see less people in need of such services so that the filming of the goal is ultimately reached hopefully sooner rather than later thank you lou i appreciate it but in the meantime we want to make sure that everybody is watching tonight dennis knows that they can volunteer a task they can give a call the six zero nine six nine five five four five six or go on the go on the web site near a soup kitchen and i think one of the important things is if you're sitting on your couch right now watching the show please make a new year's resolution to volunteer at least once a month and if you can do that then just walk over to your checkbook right now and write out check task and show your love and appreciation for not only  work that test is doing but also for the need that many individuals have right now and so it could be you could be to your neighbor it could be a family member it could be a friend but make sure that you stand by ready to help whether it's in person or by now through a check and i think that would be that would be a true demonstration of everyone's need to contribute at this very very important time in our history so dennis congratulations thank you sir wishes pre shared it very much thank you we not retiring but we charging and doing something else that's crazy cause i know you just can't sit still you'll be doing something else but whatever it is i'm sure to be successful and and best of luck to you thank you thank you for coming on the show tonight thanks again i really appreciate the opportunity it was great having you and i'm the go team thanking everybody for watching so until next week stay focused stay healthy stay active and i'll see you again have a good night