the human service commission in the town and also elisa nehru who is executive director of human services and i want to thank you both for coming on and i know rush also co chair and co founder of send hunger packing which is  and for those of you who may be familiar with it it's a fantastic organization and doing great work and hopefully more of you after watching this show will volunteer your time and hopefully some of your monetary resources to keep going because it such a such a great great thing that's going on in the community but before we start i want to first thank you because i know you're both very busy very busy and i know we have you know a nice time frame today to talk about the summer time  for the need how was that identified well two thousand and twelve the executive director then since he and brought to the commission meeting the question of food insecurity and pr and while she was reason the certain there was food insecurity she brought together a number of community leaders into a meeting this was february two thousand and twelve  and to discuss whether or not food insecurity existed with these folks and where it exists and what resources were already available during the conversation folk quickly turned to the subject of school children and it talked about how school children while they get there provided meals for free and reduced meals during the week there were no resorts as in our town to provide weekend food so the the idea that a child would come to school on monday being more interested in food than in learning was something that caught our attention as as a result of many meetings i have a list here of about six meetings that we had scheduled during that period we came upon the  the idea of send hunger packing princeton and we quickly identified two other partners so that it's a three legged stool princeton human services the mercer street friends who provides who is the provider of food and packaging of food and the princeton school system and we we formed sent her packing princeton and we had  developed a board of directors advisors if you will and we were off and running the the first contribution by princeton university really firmed up the school then superintendent of schools and we got together and we accepted the check and we began our first fundraiser was in june of two thousand and thirteen and our and there was an interesting fundraiser and this is really where lisa entered the picture she was there for our inaugural day and we we showed a film place at the table which demonstrated food insecurity around the country and it put more money in the bank and in september we were ready to start and the program was very simple marshall street friends package the food we raised the money to pay for it the school sent a vehicle to pick up the food to deliver to t four elementary schools one thing that was really interesting that we were really very quietly putting this program on and we but when the cotton at the prison nursery school heard about it and she said she called and she says russ i heard that you guys are starting a food program on the weekend we have at our school about twenty five kids from the community who really could use a gui join without hesitation i didn't even call the little advisory board i knew they would all agree we said yes so the program started and we've since then we've had other fundraisers as we moved into the fall the library has been a major supporter of our our program every fall they have the book fair and they they have the tents up and they said the book there is on saturday we're going to leave the tents up for you on things about send hunger packing princeton it came out of a national program called the backpack program and it exists in communities across the u s and we tweak that the name just i think it was more street friends believe the name didn't really make a lot of sense backpack program people confuse it for school supplies or something else and so they're the ones who gave it the name sent her packing and we've added an extra p for princeton one of the things that it's really neat about this group us that around the work that they're doing fundraising you know figuring out how to get food to people in that need it is also the educational piece of shop they've done a really great job at educating the community the food insecurity exists in princeton certainly coming in as an outsider to this community that was one of my first questions what is the need in princeton i've never seen any person here that might be in need of why because we live in a community that is known for its wealth and it so it was really hard for people even to even donors think what there is food insecurity here and you're asking me to donate to for a local program that is feeding kids here in princeton and certainly as a human services director when i'm at county meetings  think i'm often told the same thing or what are you doing here what do you need in princeton so it's been really need to be able to focus on both right we're also bringing awareness of the fact that we have children in our community that are going home where there might not be all three meals that may be coming to school on an empty stomach and so it's really nice for for shop to also take that on the lead on that as well so in terms of yes the community right around the time when i began i also did a community needs assessment and part of that was measuring you know what were some of the programs that we haf in the community to help people access food are they're being utilized to people kno w about these services are there barriers to the services and we found out that you know we've surveyed over two hundred fans households in princeton all low to moderate income households and what we realized is that even if we have families that are living paycheck to paycheck that are maybe receiving federal assistance like food stamps or they may make a little bit too much money and they don't qualify for food stamps but they're going to our pantry they're going to our soup kitchens and that is still not enough for them they find themselves from time to time during the month you know there's not a lot of food left to their small lot of money to buy food we had focus  emily said it was really heartbreaking to hear some of our families here talk about having to skip a meal or having to feed their children and parents won't eat and those were real stories those were people that were sitting down with me telling me about their talen just so definitely there's that need to have you looked at the percentage of families that are in need and gone down over the years or so let's focus on the numbers when we started the program the  number was twelve percent of the princeton school system the kids in the school program were on free and reduced lunches that would coke relate to about four hundred four hundred twenty five kids weren't free and reduced lunch and now it doesn't mean that all these four hundred twenty five kids are always food insecure or have the cupboard bare but it does mean that their their income the family income is at a level that warrants their getting free and reduced lunches just to put a little bit of focus on th income levels family of four that qualify for free and reduced lunches as thirty two thousand for a family for free of lunch and forty five thousand for a reduced lunch now if we break that down into smaller numbers after you take into account housing costs and you know the utility costs and other costs that leaves a family of four four hundred fifty dollars per week income to live on everything or you know to pay for phone car fuel food health care that kind of thing so these these families definitely could benefit from the lunches and you know the meals on the weekends for their kids and  and because we are a private funded organization there's no requirements no preconditions to be approved for this so if you say you want it you get it that that's the only requirement  so and also when you take into consideration that the government numbers thirty thousand and forty five thousand are limits that the family who makes forty five thousand and one dollar doesn't qualify for the government program it doesn't mean they're not food insecure so if you assume that twelve percent is the governor you know is the number on free reduced and you say maybe another fifty percent of that are food insecure as well which case is about eighteen percent that'll take you up to like five hundred plus students in our school system who are food insecure at one time or another there's about and you know better that way but there's about two hundred ten classes in school that means that two to three kids in every class are our food insecurity some point a serious issue we we have since we started the program delivered about eighty four thousand supplemental meals to the kids in our school system amazing and i know the goal is to put yourself out of business where where there is no food  insecurity one of the big things we talked about academic achievement too by students is that you cannot do well in school if you're hungry when you go to school hungry you just not it's just not going to do well it's it's like it's like exercising true for five hours before you go play soccer game it's just not going to once again but i think one of that when the keys though is you know the steps that you see being taken and how do people get over some of the obstacles you see the if you want it right a lot of times people's pride you know it's in the way of them being able to say i need it right so how do we how do we really get that message across that yes we know that you're proud to know that this is something that you don't want to war but it can be beneficial to your family right a lot of you know thinking when you're talking about a program or a service you know you put a lot of thought into how do you provide the service of the service in a way that still people can have dignity and feel like they're respected and just because they're accessing you know in this case food they don't feel less than others so there's a lot of thought put into the way that shop is delivered  families so think about you know we've put a lot of common there's a lot of conversations around how do we distribute the food to kids without them having to stake a matter of you know why are you getting this bag of food and i'm not specially in a school like prison in schools like princeton where you have all income levels and i think that that one that is one of the biggest challenge and i think not just for food services but for a lot of services in our community sometimes it is a pride issue sometimes it's lack of just awareness you know where a community that is very diverse so for people that come from other countries where this kind of social service not available they don't necessarily know that something like that could even exist  there's just a lot of you know we rely a lot on community leaders community groups that have to trust in the community with precedence with groups of people to tell them about the services to kind of encourage them to apply to assist to soup kitchens so we you know we really do i think a good job at making sure that we have those connection stablish so that people feel comfortable getting accessing the services that we're here to provide but but yes i think that it continues to be a challenge particularly with some families who may be in need but may not want to sign up for shop for one reason or another you know sometimes they feel like we're all so limited in the food that we provide because of space and storage  so that's also a challenge but i think there is you know i think just globally there is a lot of thinking you know how can we make sure that food programs are accessible as much as possible i think sometimes we think of like you know getting food to people and we may not think about well what are their homes look like do they have a kitchen do they have utensils and the proper equipment to make the food that we're giving them when you're talking about a commute see that you know there is a group we have immigrants in our community who are living in overshoot you know overcrowded housing and they're sharing a house with other families do they have access to a kitchen they may not write that understanding those things so that we you know we just have this food this breakfast program and we thought it was going to be successful we had essentially free breakfast for anyone who really wanted it stopped by a local church and grab it you have to eat it here  it just didn't work out we didn't have a lot of people coming in because we had we're talking about already stressed households that may not have the time to make that additional stop to get breakfast because maybe they're you know they have so much more going on that they may not or maybe they didn't know that this existed so were we and i think that was to challenge as a challenge but also for us to think about what what can we do better to make sure that people are getting to where they need to to get food or a program yeah and we actually got support from trenton the trenton parks and recreation division of town they have fifty programs like this we became their fifty first we we had a debriefing today about that and we were talking about what we could have done better and one of the things i did suggest and i referred back to the needs assessment that elisa over oversaw years ago and i said you know it's we just about where it would work about what would the supposed to be doing and i believe we are is that we put on fridays we put these bags there's a coordinator in each school who gets the button receives a box of food from mars just for a friend and they put it in the kid's backpack before the end of the day and the kids go home and there's not much obvious visual cues that show that these kids have gotten food again going back to sensitivity we are really successful in the elementary schools and nursery schools we are very modestly successful in the middle school and we are reluctant at the moment to go into the high school for all the well last year we held a fundraiser at the library at heinz plaza and it was called well we borrowed it from a program called empty bowls elsewhere in the country we had a group discussion and we said so we're talking about the glass half full half empty kind of conversation and we all decided to a person that doesn't it sounds better to be not talking about an empty ball but filling a ball hired adam welsh who is a potter who lives in hightstown who is an adjunct professor at princeton university and who runs the art project at greenwich house and greenwich village  yeah so i mean i think one of the cool things about shop is that every year the fundraising theme changes so you're not going to the same thing so it's very much fun events are family oriented they're educational a couple of years ago we had the hunger banquet which was a social experiment of bringing people in they were assigned a seat at different tables and that was going to you know they we had ten percent of people there were in the higher and we had a i don't know like sixty percent of people in the moderate income and then the rest were all low income and that determined there for the food that they were going to be served so it's a very visual experiment of how people even reacted to scene those who were just eating pasta you know and there the ten percent ers where are you know by where there's been girl getting stay get and you know there's really tasty and delicious food so that was really nice and last year we had the fill the bowls event which you know is also another visual of you know you're coming here and your donations are going to buy food to feed children and in your community so we had a local restaurant they donated  food that was kind of like a tasting event where you go you know you had your ball and you went to each restaurant and you tried their different meals that they had provided so this year the theme is salsa and salsa so we're going to salad cook off so we're challenging local restaurants to submit their best salsa and we're going to have a i guess panel of judges and also the community that the participants are going to have their their i guess opportunity to vote for the best salsa and and then we're going to have salsa instructors as well do a performance and teach people a few steps so yes it's going to be a really fun event and that is going to happen september twenty fourth at the heinz plaza i'd want to clock ok but going back to the hunger bank when this was an experience an experiment but what was really interesting was three different levels of eating so the people eating sandwiches and the people having steak one of the things is the people at the higher end would walk around to the lower end tables this was just spontaneous and they would say you know would you like to share you know especially going to those you know the low cost area but we have this extra food and so this was going on all afternoon which was really i think an indication though i've been there couple times serving them and because of their program we started the similar program that the first baptist church so now tuesdays and wednesdays and we were talking we said let me think now people are angry enough seventy to one hundred people  r night are hungry enough to go on wednesday and tuesday well wednesday then right and then we said you think it might work on another night and we said no i think so so we worked out the same deal with task which provides a meal for free so now we've got two nights covered and table one table does it once a week once a month right and i don't i'm unaware of any other dinners but the obvious question is if there's that many people interested a couple of nights when it gets to you i think the question about the you know getting stuff from rush transit is left over i think that's a big question mark just because of you know regulations in terms of food and health department there audience tonight i think for everyone anyone that wants to learn more about shop certainly you can visit our website but you know just even you know we're always looking for volunteers and anyone that can you know professional volunteers particularly because the organization primarily runs with a volunteer board i guess so that's always something that you know we appreciate if people are interested particularly duty during our fundraising month we have a lot of tasks and things that we would love to to get people to to participate in and it's really fun and it's very good cos you know so the website is what is web site you can shop princeton dot org i think if you pay hunger packing princeton or ok and if you want to volunteer just go to that website and there are ways that you can get engaged and give us your information and somebody will be in touch with you and you can write to e mail to in princeton dot org and that will also be a way to talk with us good one thank you both for coming to like you and i appreciate what you've done in the work that you've put in because it's a lot of work and but all for a very very great cause nobody should be hungry we should go hungry and we have to find ways to do better in the midst regard and to make sure that generation from now don't look back and say you know why didn't they do something when they could've done something on the fact that you're doing it  to we actually both you think you would like to say it's better for a child to go to school hungry for knowledge than hungry for food on monday there you go there you go and everybody is watching when you eat tonight or when you're walking into a restaurant sitting down  think about the people who who don't have what you have decided to fast think about the people who don't need a reason to fast because every day is assessed and so if you can please you know go to the website make yourself if you can't get your checkbook please and you feel whole lot better write out a check send it to shop and you feel a whole lot better knowing that you've taken care of a lot of people who are struggling day to day you know just to make ends meet so if that's the thing that you can do you feel whole about yourself and send a check anonymously i'm sure they'll take your money but i don't think that you'll feel the worst for your feel the worst fourth if you don't do anything ok so