Neighbors Helping Neighbors

With 1 in 5 Ohio children struggling with hunger, and a worsening pandemic -one local pantry is on a mission

Angela Douglas wants to spread the word about food insecurity within the New Albany community. According to Douglas, the single biggest obstacle in creating awareness about the New Albany Food Pantry is the fact that the community doesn’t realize there is a segment of its population that is food insecure.

“There’s probably between 400-450 students in the school system that are on the free and reduced lunch program,” Douglas says.

Douglas first became involved with the NAFP as a volunteer in 2011 when it was called the Village Coalition Against Hunger. As director of the NAFP for the past six years, Douglas has community awareness and compassion at the top of her priority list.

Today, the NAFP serves nearly 200 New Albany families. Its service model focuses on residents within the New Albany-Plain Local School District. In 2018, the NAFP served more than 50,000 meals.

The NAFP has created marketing material and a media packet designed to educate key community stakeholders in a one-on-one setting about the current situation. The NAFP also hosts lunch-and-learn sessions aimed at educating the community on poverty and food insecurity, particularly in suburban areas. One particularly memorable session featured Glennon Sweeney, a senior research associate for The Kirwan Institute at The Ohio State University, and the goal was to determine the best way to show compassion and serve those in need of a consistent food source.  

In July 2018, the NAFP officially became a part of Healthy New Albany. Other partners include the New Albany-Plain Local School District.

“I think the school partnership has helped us hugely because they have the ability to reach so many people through the school communications channels,” Douglas says. “Partnering with the school has been instrumental and I think the partnership with Healthy New Albany will definitely begin to raise awareness.”

Mayor Sloan Spalding has declared the month of September as Hunger Action Month. Through this city proclamation, every year the NAFP is able to generate press opportunities to spread the word and grow its volunteer base.

The NAFP also offers cooking classes. Chef Eileen Pewitt, who is also the NAFP's cooking education coordinator, conducts classes twice a month for community members and the proceeds go directly to the pantry.

The pantry also relies heavily on its volunteers to spread the word.

“We have a huge base of volunteers, probably 350 community members who volunteer, and I feel like that’s really probably been the single best way to spread the word because our volunteers know about it and then they share about it and then we get new volunteers,” Douglas says.

One aspect which differentiates the NAFP from other pantries is the level of hospitality that each volunteer and staff member brings to the table.

“I will say that our volunteers are really unique in that I’ve been to a lot of different food pantries and studied their service models and what they do, and what makes us really different is that we serve with hospitality,” Douglas says. “So, it’s not as though we’re serving somebody that’s ‘less than’ us. … The spirit of our service is serving people that are just like us, and that gets to the heart of compassion – being able to see yourself in the person sitting next to you, whoever that might be.”

It’s important for the NAFP to keep hospitality at the heart of its mission because it creates a special atmosphere, spirit and tone.

“We have people who are laughing and joking and it’s like friends gathering together and there’s a lot of sharing,” Douglas says. “It’s not a one-way deal where we’re giving a person food and then they leave immediately.”

To volunteer, visit www.newalbanyfoodpantry.org/volunteer and submit the web form.

The Tower Garden Initiative

Douglas received a call from a group of New Albany-Plain Local School teachers, and Principal Teresa Smith, with an inquiry about how they could partner with the NAFP on a second-grade class project. After some deliberation and brainstorming, it was agreed that the project would involve growing herbs in a greenhouse.

“It became an herb that the kids could grow as part of their project and harvest for sale at the local farmers market to raise money for the food pantry,” Douglas says.

Unfortunately, the first round of herbs didn’t take, so they were forced to pivot from utilizing a greenhouse. Fortuitously, Douglas was approached by community members with an idea to instead utilize tower gardens.

“There’s little sections where you plant up to 20 seeds on the tower, which is maybe five-and-a-half feet tall,” Douglas says. “It waters itself and has grow lights, so it’s essentially a self-contained garden.”

After further brainstorming, New Albany residents Steve and Deb King came forward to donate the first tower garden, which is now located in a second-grade classroom at the NAPL primary school. The first seeds planted were tea plants.

“We planted lemon balm, mint and one other kind of tea,” Douglas says. “The kids grew, harvested and dried the leaves and then we had a tea party to taste the teas.”

Right now, the tower garden is being used in the math lab, where the students will plant marigolds and lima beans in order to measure the growth of each plant over its lifecycle.

Douglas and representatives of the NAFP recently met with NAPLS teacher Sandy Reed, who is a partner with National Geographic, creator of the district’s STEM Expedition program and coordinator of the Easton E3 Learning Lab. Together, they will create a grant proposal with the goal of obtaining more tower gardens to be placed throughout the primary building. They also want to create an entire curriculum for project-based learning.

“We’ve identified some of the criteria in how the tower gardens can be used in math and the sciences, life skills and cooking,” Douglas says. “You name it, really the possibilities are endless.”

Want to Donate?

Food donations can be made year-round at the drop boxes located near both entrances of the Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany, 150 W. Main St., New Albany, OH.

Wish list items include: canned fruit, vegetables, soup and meat; rice; pasta; cereal; granola bars and peanut butter.

For every dollar donated, NAFP is able to purchase $10 worth of food and groceries.

This article was originally published within the May/June 2019 issue of Healthy New Albany Magazine.