This Thursday, January 21st, we kick off Third Thursdays. Please join us at 6pm at the Webster Ave PHA cafeteria and enjoy a delicious variety of foods made by local restaurants and volunteers.  All PHA community members and their families are welcome. Take-home containers will be provided so that any leftovers can be shared and enjoyed later.

The PHA community consists of an over-achieving, under-served population. Over 95% of the high school seniors go on to 4-year colleges. At the same time, an estimated 3 out of 10 PHA students would benefit from greater access to food during non-school hours. Last year we kicked off a weekend food backpack program to start to address this need. This year we are adding Third Thursdays. Continue reading →

Like everyone else I know, I react to the holiday season with a fair amount of reflection and anticipation, reviewing what the past year has given, and envisioning how the next year may unfold.  And, I see lots to be happy about in both directions.

Let’s start with taking a quick look at what we’ve accomplished with Thrive this fall. Since the start of October, the Early Childhood campus has distributed 31 food backpacks each Friday to children in need. That’s a total of 372 food backpacks, or 744 breakfasts, 744 lunches, and 744 snacks! (Not that I’m counting…) This year the backpacks are healthier, including fresh fruit (apples, oranges) and vegetables (carrots, celery) to accompany the shelf-safe items. Tomorrow, our last distribution of 2015, due to a donation from our friends at Amigos, we will send home 31 bags of citrus fruit with an attached Market Basket gift card. Hopefully this will make the holidays less hungry and more happy for all. This fall we were also able to expand our Food for Free fruit deliveries to include a weekly case of fresh fruit for the Upper Elementary, ensuring easy access to healthy snacks in the Franklin Street building.

Looking forward, efforts are well underway to start distributing weekend backpacks out of the Upper Elementary campus in January.  And on January 21 we will host our first “Third Thursday” community supper at the Early Childhood campus. Thanks to Community Cooks, Third Thursdays will happen monthly through the spring, will be open to any and all members of the PHA community.  And we’ve just received word that in March we can apply for another round of grant funding from MIT’s Community Service Fund. (Yay!) Later in the spring we will host our second annual Thrive fundraiser, encouraging friends, family and community members to come together for an afternoon of good food, drink, and celebration around a good cause.

This is all to say, life is good, and Thrive is thriving as we head into 2016! Many thanks and best wishes to you all.

-Barbara

You might think that bundling and distributing 31 food backpacks each week is a pretty simple task. I bet you’d be surprised by some of the complexities involved, and what an important role a single individual can play, if they reliably take care of just one small piece of that process. Byron, the Early Childhood Campus maintenance man plays one of those critical roles, and he does so incredibly reliably, almost invisibly, and without the show of appreciation he deserves – until now.

Every Friday as the sun is just coming up, I pull into the back parking lot with my tiny car loaded to the roof with large boxes and bags of food bundles. I leave these bundles on the back stoop of the school, and drive back home to get my daughter fed, dressed and ready to start her day. Without my asking (I hadn’t gotten to it yet), Byron noticed the first such delivery at the beginning of October, recognized that these food bundles most likely needed to get to Nurse Maureen’s office, and kindly made it happen. And he’s made it happen every Friday morning since.

A loud and clear shout out to Byron, for being such a thoughtful, quiet and important part of the process!! (Sorry for the bluriness of the image. It’s probably because he never stops moving…)

Twinx loves food packing night! And while she doesn’t actually help with the sorting and the bundling, she does keep me company and well amused. So long as I don’t accidentally leave her in a box on the back stoop of school, life is good.

It’s 6pm, Thursday October 8, and 28 bundles of food and 1 cat are all boxed and good to go. Time to relax and enjoy a beverage.

Thrive! kicks off the new school year with our first set of backpacks going home this coming Friday!! And it looks as though we will be serving more families – we are up to 30. I don’t know whether to celebrate (does this mean word has spread?), or to worry (does this mean more families are finding themselves in positions of increased food insecurity?). Either way, we are back up and running, and hoping to continue our success, building a healthy community, one backpack at a time. Remember it’s never too late to spread the word or sign up. Just reach out to your classroom teacher(s) or to nurse Maureen.

In order to continue to Thrive (pun intended) we need to grow. One direction we hope to grow is in launching a Thrive! backpack program at the Upper Elementary campus. Conversations for that are underway. But families at the Early Childhood campus, don’t worry about being neglected. In addition to continuing the daily healthy snacks provided by Food for Free, we hope to kick off monthly community suppers provided by Somerville’s Community Cooks. We’re thinking of aiming for Third Thursdays, 5-7. If you have ideas or suggestions about how to make Third Thursdays a well-attended community success, please don’t be shy!

“Happy Birthday, Scott!!” That was the message associated with a generous donation to our PHA Thrive fundraising site. Since I know Scott as one of our most vocal and enthusiastic supporters, I made the connection that this donation must have been made in honor of him. I thanked the donor, and told him I would also reach out to Scott to inform him of this donation in his name.

Scott was very pleasantly surprised. And the story he shared was short, sweet and worth repeating. Scott apparently works in the same office as this donor. When Scott hired a PHA rising senior to work for him this summer, it opened the door to a broader conversation about things going on at PHA, including our efforts to eliminate hunger in the community. Scott is known as one of our best ambassadors. He told his co-worker about PHA Thrive, its goals, and it’s importance to the community and to Scott personally. Well, the donor understandably was impressed by Scott’s enthusiasm and made a donation that will guarantee a child up to 20 weekends of healthy food.

And while you may think that’s the end of the story, it gets better. Scott then matched the original donor’s contribution. Now there’s a PHA child that will have weekend food for an entire school year.

It’s support like this that warms my heart and makes me smile!!

Well, we packed our last backpacks for the year yesterday and they will go home with children today. All tolled, that’s 285 backpacks and 45 Market Basket Gift cards distributed to PHA Early Childhood families between February and the end of the school year. Seems like a lot, but I know it’s barely making a dent.

As I prepared for the last packing, I first unpacked food items from their their bulk cartons and laid them out for easy access.  Looking at the food before it gets repackaged, it too looks like a lot, but I know that in each individual backpack, there’s not that much – just enough for two breakfasts and two lunches for one child. The experience reminded me of my typical Saturday afternoon which involves unpacking the weekly family grocery shopping bags onto my kitchen counter. The amount of food looks like a lot. Yet usually by Thursday, we’ve drunk more milk than anticipated, or run out of bread or eggs or some other “essential” item. For me, it’s an easy problem to solve, yet I forget regularly how fortunate I am to have the means as well as the easy access to a food market.

As we reach the end of another school year, let’s celebrate the tremendous progress we’ve made in addressing the hunger issue at PHA.  I, for one, commit to make an even bigger dent in the hunger issue next year.

Happy Summer, Everyone!

Ah, blogging.  Feels so good when I do it, but so easy to fall out of the habit.  And as we near the end of the school year, I am reminded that it is time to write.

Today, Friday June 12, marks the 3rd Friday in a row that Maureen has had to do both the packing AND the distribution of the backpacks.  Yes, I’ve been delinquent in my duties.  And yes, we should all be tremendously grateful to Maureen for adding the packaging to her already overloaded schedule.  One thing I’ve learned is that for things as operational as weekly food acquisition and redistribution, habits, routines and backup plans are essential.  And I commit to devoting time this summer to strengthening our operations. Maureen should not have to be my “packup backup” plan.

And what an inspiring conversation I had a week ago with Vicky I from Somerville’s Community Cooks!! Community Cooks http://communitycooks.org/, for those unfamiliar is a very cool local organization that mobilizes volunteers to prepare home-cooked food for vulnerable populations seeking assistance. Vicky is connected with all the different emergency food efforts springing up in the area, and is now planning a time for us to come together, share ideas, support one another, and use the power of our numbers to have a greater impact.  Next month representatives from Somerville School District as well as Thrive, Cambridge’s School Backpack program, Arlington’s Food Pantry, Food for Free, and Community Cooks will come together for the first time, and we will see where we go from there. At the same time, Vicky and I will be exploring a partnership between Thrive and Community Cooks to deliver monthly hot suppers to the PHA community starting in the fall.

As summer approaches, stay tuned, stay cool, and build community through food!

What can I say, other than “Wow!”

Our Thrive Fundraiser at The Independent in Union Square exceeded all of our expectations.  On a day that included the opening of the Union Square Farmers’ Market, and Somerville Porch Fest, we drew a crowd of about 40 people into a room filled with lively music by DJ Tiernan, platters of great food, and a well-tended and well-stocked bar.  I heard stories of how those in attendance made connections with other neighbors, families, teachers, administrators from both lower and upper school campuses. We welcomed into this gathering my dear friend Eugene, who came all the way from Ireland, not just for our fundraiser but we can pretend we had an international reach. Eugene enjoyed meeting many in the crowd with obvious Irish roots – yes, Maureen MacCarthy you were one of them! I watched as my daughter, Aswita’s children and other children danced, played with balloons, and climbed in and around crowds of tables and people. I witnessed a community strengthening connections that already existed, and forming new connections where none had been before. And I felt a bit overwhelmed with gratitude!

In this one beautiful afternoon, with the volunteer help of Alden the Amazing Auctioneer, and through the generosity of those that came out and those that donated even when they could not join us, we made $3,815.

That’s roughly 636 weekend food backpacks, or 8-10 months of weekend food for the number of families currently participating.

And that, my friends, is FANTASTIC!! 

Sorry for being Barbara the Bad Blogger.  The good news is now I have lots to share!

As you may have read in my last post, on April 16 I had the pleasure of participating in a Family Resource Night at PHA Early Childhood Campus.  My daughter Aregash joined me as a junior ambassador for Thrive, and here’s proof.

April 18 was the Empty Bowls Fundraiser for Food For Free at Mudflat Studios.  For a $20 ticket, we each picked out a beautifully handcrafted pottery bowl, filled it repeatedly with delicious soups from local restaurants, and took the bowl home at the end of the evening to add to our collection. We socialized with all sorts of friends and potential future friends, listened to live music provided by my guitarist husband Phil and his base player Paul, as well as our new friend and base player Tony and his guitarist. All this happened in the beautiful sun-filled Mudflat space.  Due to a tremendous turnout, from what I understand Food For Free made over $9K in the course of a few hours. YAY!

Related, but not really, the past two weeks when I’ve arrived at 11 Inman Street on Monday morning to pick up my crate of fresh fruit, Food For Free has thrown in juice boxes and individually packaged applesauces as well.  Have I mentioned recently how much I love Food For Free?

And now for the most important update…(drum roll please) Our very own first annual THRIVE FUNdraiser. (Yes that odd capitalization is deliberate.) The Independent in Union Square, Saturday May 16, 2-4pm. Be there or be square!

https://twitter.com/PHACharter/status/588033289052626945/photo/1