Food Distribution
UNC Charlotte Student Pantry - Kim Buch
Dr. Kim Buch, a Professor of Psychology at UNCC, helped found the Jamil Niner Student Pantry in 2012. Nationwide, approximately 20 to 60% of college students are food insecure. UNCC’s food pantry serves less than 2% of the student population and had 3,000 clients last academic year (2017-2018). Dr. Buch discusses the history and evolution of the pantry, the students served, the types of food provided, and other services and programs offered. She also discusses community partners and donors who support the pantry.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Introductions, 2012 Hunger Summit, beginnings of the student pantry |
| 0:04:52 | Naming donor of Jamil Niner, expansion of the garden and professional clothing closet |
| 0:06:33 | Service learning, impact of serving on students |
| 0:08:28 | 2012 Hunger Summit, how Dr. Kim became aware of hunger on college campuses, general population hunger versus college student population hunger |
| 0:11:08 | Number of students served, demographic info collected, demographics of students served |
| 0:14:18 | Unique versus regular visitors, amount of food donated, criteria students must meet, intake form |
| 0:18:28 | Resistance from Chartwells and changing criteria, process when students come to the pantry |
| 0:23:50 | Clients with families, high demand items, types of food available, partnerships |
| 0:28:18 | Fresh produce from partnerships, university support, non-food donation support from partners |
| 0:32:57 | Swipe Out Hunger program, |
| 0:35:11 | Resistance in addition to Chartwells, limited space, percieved stigma of being food insecure |
| 0:39:15 | Other universities, growth of food distribution network in Charlotte, food reclamation |
| 0:42:49 | Development of UNCC Community Garden and its relationship with the Jamil Niner Student Pantry |
| 0:46:32 | Importance of students serving others, guesstimate of number of students who volunteer weekly, concluding remarks |
[00:00:07]
>> Rachel McManaman: [SOUND] Today is Thursday April 4th 2019 at 4 PM. My name is Rachel McManaman and I am at the Jamil Niner Student Pantry on UNC Charlotte's campus. Dr Kim, thank you. Thank you. This interview is part of the Queen's Garden an oral history project, a project collecting oral histories of local Charlotteans involved in food distribution, urban agriculture, and community gardens in the Charlotte area.
[00:00:34]
The Jamil Niner Student Pantry provides assistance to UNC Charlotte undergraduate and graduate students that struggle with food insecurity. The pantry offers a variety of nutritious meals and frequently gives demonstrations on what meals can be made with the food in the pantry. In addition to providing food, the pantry offers a variety of programs such as a professional clothing closet, a community garden, swipe out hunger, and a new resource center that links students with campus and community resources.
[00:01:07]
Now Dr. Kim.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Mm-hm.
>> Rachel McManaman: Dr. Kim. [LAUGH] Sophia called you that.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yep, that's what they all call me.
>> Rachel McManaman: [LAUGH] So could you please introduce yourself? And tell me a little bit about how you got involved with the Student Pantry.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yes. So I'm Kim Buch in the psychology department.
[00:01:22]
And I got involved with this when I attended the North Carolina Hunger Summit in 2012. And at that time, on-campus food pantries were just taking off. They were already, I think, around ten, just in North Carolina alone. And other campuses were really looking at it seriously. And so we, a team of faculty, staff, and students, represented UNC Charlotte at the Hunger Summit.
[00:01:52]
It was in Elon, and we came home and made recommendations, came back to campus and made recommendations that we thought that this is something that UNC Charlotte should consider. And of course we have a severe space invitation on our campus, and so why all the university administration was very supportive of our proposal, the lack of suitable space pretty much resulted in our, the lack of success of our first initiative.
[00:02:26]
So that was in 2012, fall of 2012 we tried in earnest. I think we made the proposal in 2013, and nothing happened. And finally I started working with Sean, I'm in academic affairs, Sean Langley of course is in students affairs. And together, and I don't really even know how it happened, but Sean was looking for space in Cone Center.
[00:02:57]
And we we did finally get space and Cone Center, and it turned out to be a janitor's closet. And they said we had to keep the buckets there. We had already received a grant from Food Lion, that was one of our initial partners, they're no longer involved. But we'd already received a grant from them to give us our first full stock for the pantry that was to have opened in Cone.
[00:03:25]
Well, we were getting really frustrated. And finally my chair at the time, she's no longer the chair, but my chair at the time offered very limited faculty office space. Right in the academic building of Colvard, which is where psychology is housed. So we started in a room that was about 8 by 12.
[00:03:54]
No windows or anything, it was just surrounded by classroom space. And so we actually operated, The Pantry in my building for the first year. Throughout that year, we were actively lobbying, and presenting, and working hard to get a more suitable space. While over that first summer, that was in the fall of 2014, by the time we finally opened.
[00:04:19]
And over that first summer the university acquired these two, these are private residences, the university has owned a lot of stuff over there, they own all of this, except for the adult daycare, and these two properties while the university acquired them. And we had been petitioning for space, we got lucky and this building was assigned to us on a temporary basis.
[00:04:44]
But then, we've been operating here ever since. But in the fall of 2015 we got our naming donor. So, that's where we got our name the Jamil Student Pantry, and along with that, and so it's dad Jamil has been on the board of trustees for campus for a long time and they decided that they wanted to support us.
[00:05:10]
And once you have that kind of support, if it comes to the university in the form of a, I forget the name of it. It's like money that is dedicated to the pantry. They continue to pay for it over time.
>> Rachel McManaman: Like an endowed grant?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Something like that.
[00:05:35]
And so because of that, we feel like even that this building was only given to us on a temporary basis, and we were told not to get too comfortable, because very likely that we would not be able to keep this building. But because now we have the naming donor, we're hoping that this is at least a semi-permanent place.
[00:05:58]
In 2015, no 2016, we expanded with the garden. And so that was our first expansion. And then in 2017, we hired our first garden director. And then in 2017 also, we started our professional clothing closet. And that was my students' in the service running class that actually started the professional clothing closet as one of their service learning projects for the class.
[00:06:33]
>> Rachel McManaman: And in the questionnaire, you said your interest in service and learning was kind of what got you interested in the Student Pantry.
>> Dr Kim Buch: That's exactly why, yeah. I had no idea that hunger and food insecurity was an issue among college students. At that time back in 2012 when I first became aware of it, and the fact that so many campuses were responding to the problem with on campus food pantries, I was really surprised.
[00:07:02]
And I was concerned obviously, because I'm invested in student success and anything that would detract from student success is obviously not a good thing. So I was very interested in serving the needs of students who do have the problem. I was mostly interested in it as a place for my students to have an opportunity to learn how to serve.
[00:07:26]
I've been doing service learning with my students for many years, and it's always one of the biggest challenges, to find a suitable site. And especially working with first year students, like my psychology learning community, that's where Sophia started, as a first semester freshman. They don't have cars, it's very difficult to arrange for transportation.
[00:07:46]
So the idea of having something right on campus that would provide volunteers with genuine, meaningful service was really exciting. And so I got involved that way. You know again, I'm interested in the students and the clients but Leave them more interested in my research is really more looking at the impact of service, serving on students and their specific development.
[00:08:15]
There, how that experience is part of a general education, and really important to the curriculum.
>> Rachel McManaman: Right, right, and so you said that you had become largely unaware of hunger and common illnesses.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Totally.
>> Rachel McManaman: How were your eyes open to this?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Just at that hunger summit.
[00:08:40]
>> Rachel McManaman: Were you just interested and wanted to go?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yes, the way this conference, they have them every year if you want to look it up. It's a really cool summit, and it's co sponsored by Campus Compact. And and so it's just a whole lot of people that come from all over to talk and learn.
[00:09:02]
But the university since teams and so the charge of each team after they leave this summit is to go back and make recommendations to their campus. So we I think I wrote up the the recommendations report for our little team. I think there was only two or three, three or four of us who were there.
[00:09:21]
One of my students went and couple of other faculty members but I wrote up the recommendation and in doing that, the I think, I don't remember. I could look it up was one of our very top priorities in terms of recommendations. It just seemed like low hanging fruit and learning that so many other UNC system schools already had them, we were almost like feeling in 2012.
[00:09:48]
Late to the table with that but truly I had no idea. I just assumed that my students, our students were basically middle class students. I had no idea that not only is it a problem, but it is a bigger problem than it is in the general population. And since it, yeah, hunger and food and security is higher among college students nationwide than it is in the general population.
[00:10:18]
Yeah, the general population is estimated by the FDA as about 15%. And it's harder to measure on college campuses for a lot of reasons. And, of course, college campuses are not homogeneous. Community colleges are different than four year colleges, but in general, it's believed that it's from 20 to 60% depending on the location and the type of students that are served.
[00:10:47]
So and then the one study that we've done at UNC Charlotte, which is not a good study very small sample size estimates are rate of hundreds of insecurity on our campuses right in that range, around 25%.
>> Rachel McManaman: Wow, that's one in four students.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Exactly.
>> Rachel McManaman: That's one in-
[00:11:03]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
>> Rachel McManaman: For 30,000 students, that's a high amount.
>> Dr Kim Buch: It is.
>> Rachel McManaman: So how many students does the pantry serve per week or per month?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay, our data 100%, they're not as good as we will like them to be. I did write an article using our first year data, and it is available in the public domain.
[00:11:28]
If you shoot me an email, I'll send you a copy.
>> Rachel McManaman: I will.
>> Dr Kim Buch: It was published in the campus compass state journal. And it reported our first year of data and that's when I kind of controlled the data since and I had an IRB approval and it was basically to do research.
[00:11:47]
But since then, Student Affairs has taken it over and we have these little iPads and our technology fails us a lot, we're not on the university WiFi and so, but Julia does keep that we use Google Forms on the iPads. And she wrote up a report for the unit.
[00:12:05]
We have to report to the people who give us money. And the report for the last academic year was 3,000 students served in the academic year. But last summer, we were also open on a very limited basis. For the first time, we were open during the summer one day a week.
[00:12:24]
And I don't know if that data included. I don't think that included our summer, so that was our last full academic year. Julia can give you more she runs monthly reports. The problem with our data and we do break it out. We asked there's the intake form asked if they're domestic student or an international student, if they're graduate, undergraduate and a few other things.
[00:12:54]
And we learn from that, and from the beginning, we have served a disproportionately high number of international students, and more of clients are graduate students and undergraduate students. Which also surprised me at first, too, but when you think about it, it makes sense. That there is a stereotype about a poor graduate students, and that is true but especially when you look at the international graduate students, they're not allowed to work.
[00:13:24]
And so that means that, like most graduate students at least have a part time job or or an assistantship or something to supplement, to take the edge off of. So we do know that. But another problem with our data is sometimes we run reports just because somebody asks for it.
[00:13:46]
And I'm not sure that those 3,000 represents unique students. Or that includes a regular shoppers, we have regulars. We have, in fact, that's something that I'm going to try to do this summer is get a better handle on who are we serving, and if we can run those reports.
[00:14:09]
So when I say 3,000 that's, we can ask Julia on our way out. I think those are not unique students.
>> Rachel McManaman: And by unique you mean?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, not the second and third time. So every time a client comes in, even if they've been here before, they have to fill out the intake form and sign the food and security pledge and all that.
[00:14:34]
>> Rachel McManaman: A unique would be a one-time business.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, and we do get them. And we get a lot of new students. I work here every Tuesday with my service earning class, and I don't think it was this Tuesday, but last Tuesday, we had like at least 12 new clients.
[00:14:50]
And the reason that we know, we don't look at their data, obviously, that's confidential, but we ask just because if it's regular clients sometimes we recognize them, but even if we don't, we ask. Have you been here before? And then if they haven't, then we have to show them, and orient them.
[00:15:08]
But most days, most clients are returning.
>> Rachel McManaman: So, I saw the scale.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah.
>> Rachel McManaman: It's huge.
>> Dr Kim Buch: I know. I know it is.
>> Rachel McManaman: How much food does the pantry give out per month? And is it weight on that scale? Or is that just for
>> Dr Kim Buch: We're going to have to ask Julia if she has a report on that.
[00:15:32]
Right now, we are not weighing food going out. And the reason for that is we had a much smaller scale about this big. And for about a year and half, we wait clients, we waited coming in and we waited going out. And our goal was to trying to track waste.
[00:15:51]
And we just thought, well, why not? More data is better than lost data, and then in the middle of the semester, last semester, our scale broke. And so we just stopped weighing food going out and what we would do for food coming in, we would just write down The number of items and stuff.
[00:16:11]
So we just got this scale over winter break. And so we have started. And so we decided, Shawn and I mostly, we just decided we don't really need to know how much food is taken, we need to know how much food we're getting. And the assumption is, almost all of that is being taken.
[00:16:34]
We do have some waste, and we probably need to have another, revisit the whole idea of doing a better job of monitoring our waste. But right now, we are not. So Julia does, could give you a monthly report or a cumulative report on how much we receive. And we're pretty good about doing that, because we want to know that all of our donors are recognized and that sort of thing, thank you notes.
[00:17:08]
>> Rachel McManaman: Right, right. So you mention the intake form the students must fill in.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yes.
>> Rachel McManaman: When they get here.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yes.
>> Rachel McManaman: Is there any criteria in which students must meet in order to receive food.
>> Dr Kim Buch: No, not now. They do sign a food and security pledge, so the intake form does mostly ask for demographics that we've already talked about.
[00:17:28]
And then it also asked them do they want clothing assistance. And if they do, then Ashley, our other UPAP, she's also one of my students. She reaches out to them and then they sign up for one of our monthly attired for hire events. So there's different questions. Like after Hurricane Florence, we added a question in, per request of the state I believe, to see if, you know, the hurricane had impacted their food and security.
[00:17:55]
And, at the very end, there is a standard wording that we got, we benchmarked other food pantries when we opened and there's kind of a standard, you know, by taking this food I pledge Food and secure and so it's like. It's just, it's good practice to do that.
[00:18:16]
And then they just collect the radio button. But you asked what else was on there?
>> Rachel McManaman: Yep, just any criteria.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay. And so when we opened We had our biggest resistance to opening the food pantry on campus was [INAUDIBLE] because they provide food for students. And so they're like, hm.
[00:18:40]
And so in order to get their buy in and they also donate and support us In order to get that. For the first three or four years we would not, students had to be living off-campus. Since the new dean of students has arrived, Dr. Bailey he has said no that's not appropriate, and so we now have No criteria except UNC Charlotte student.
[00:19:08]
>> Rachel McManaman: That's awesome.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, but they all do sign the food and security pledge.
>> Rachel McManaman: The food and security pledge. So, we already hit, I'm looking at my questions here, approximately how much of the student population is food insecure, and we said about 25.
>> Dr Kim Buch: 25%, based on a very limited survey.
[00:19:29]
But Doctor Petersen, she is in anthropology. Her students I think are, they're doing a survey, another survey this year to, you know, to try to get a better handle on that. And just to update that number, so we should be able to, you know, have a little bit better feel for that once your study is complete,
[00:19:51]
>> Rachel McManaman: Right, right. So walk me through. If I'm a student who needs food from the food pantry, what do I do when I get here? What's the process other than the forms? Walk me through that step by step.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay, did anybody come while you were sitting out there?
[00:20:07]
>> Rachel McManaman: A few, I saw a few people.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay, so basically what you saw, Sophia is a real experienced greeter. So we have volunteers and/or interns who greet clients as soon as they come in the door. You see it's right there and the first thing that, if we don't recognize them, and the regulars will start signing in, but the volunteers are asked to ask the visitor if he or she has shopped here before.
[00:20:35]
And if they have, then they just fill out the form, take their bag, and then they start shopping. If they have not, then the volunteer is supposed to get up and show them the shopping areas and review our general rules. We do have rules. Most of them are posted, like the number of items.
[00:20:57]
You know sometimes we have limits on items that are really high demand, items. Other times we have items that two equals one or four equals one, but in general, our rules are that students take 12 items a visit. But that could end up being more items, because sometimes four items equals one item, and sometimes we have perishable items that we really want to go out fast.
[00:21:21]
So we don't count some of those items as toward their 12 total. A lot of times, we have that big basket by the freezer. Those all come from chart wells and those are near expiration but still good and those don't count or anything that is expired. We work with the dietitians and chart wells.
[00:21:45]
And you know most of those are best by dates. They're not bad date, you know it after that day they're not going to be dangerous. And food and security pledge also is a, harmless. So the university is not responsible for, so is everything. But not that we've had anybody complain about, but anyway, so you can leave here with 20 or 30 items You know, on any given visit but it's just the way, it's just a way that's many items are free.
[00:22:22]
Many count you know in multiples. And then there are some limits and those are posted. So a new shopper would need to kind of get acclimated to that. And then I don't do it when I'm working but you're supposed to halt, the clients are supposed to halt, and you'll see the ones that are regular they automatically hold the bag and then the volunteer is supposed to look in and check on, and every now and then there's somebody who'd like to you know 20.
[00:22:51]
Of these, and that, you know, we, a lot of times we run out of those we got a huge shipment because power crunch donated as cases, but granola bars and things like that or they go fast. And so sometimes they'll say, you know, they didn't read the sign.
[00:23:07]
You know, can you say but for the most part, we're very lenient. I work on Tuesdays. I have three regulars, moms, that come in and I know them all now. And if I see something in the freezer like we get food, our campus kitchen's program. Sometimes you know have a giant pork tenderloin frozen or a big jumbo bag of meatballs I'll give those.
[00:23:38]
Instead of breaking them down and so and especially our clients that we know have families they can take all they want.
>> Rachel McManaman: Do you have several clients with families?
>> Dr Kim Buch: We used to ask that on our intake form. We've experimented with a bunch of different intake forms. And we had so few that that question isn't on there anymore.
[00:24:03]
But usually, you get to know people And they'll say what they're looking for and stuff. So when we were collecting that as one of our items on our intake form, it was very low percentage, very low. Which also is disrepresentative of the campus population. However, my hunch is and it's an empirical question we should be trying to explore a little bit.
[00:24:28]
They are probably more dialed into the community resources and so our undergraduate students wouldn't know to even check that out, probably.
>> Rachel McManaman: Right, and what are some of these high demand items that you mentioned?
>> Dr Kim Buch: We run out of cereal really fast. We run out of granola bars really fast.
[00:24:53]
We run out of canned fruits, whereas, we don't run out of canned vegetables. What else seems to go really fast? Anything snack, we go through lots of international foods. Anything that is from an international grocery gets snatched up really quickly. We try because knowing our clientele, we always have tons of rice.
[00:25:20]
But any of the specialty rices get taken really fast. I would say we don't go through peanut butter like your regular food pantries that serve families, they go through a lot of peanut butter because of the international. Our peanut butter sits and sits. Canned meats, we serve a lot of vegetarians here.
[00:25:45]
There are international students. So, anything that really caters to them, they have certain soups that are known to be vegan and vegetarian and they have certain brands that they look for. But in general, the big boxes of cereal, those don't last anytime at all.
>> Rachel McManaman: And what types of food does the pantry provide, other than what you just mentioned?
[00:26:11]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, pretty much all non-perishable items that you see when you're out there, we're low right now, real low. But because our biggest donor is Loaves and Fishes, so food banks provide to food pantries. I learned that since I've gotten involved, and so, we are a customer of the food bank, and they give us just standard food bank things, canned, perishable.
[00:26:41]
Excuse me, non-perishable, but we also have other partnerships where we get perishable items. And so, we get bread like what they call day old bread from Publix. A volunteer drops shipments of breads and pastries from Publix on Mondays. We have a partnership now with the Bulb, which is a cool partnership that we get near expiration, mostly fruits and veggies, but also some cheeses and specialty items from Trader Joe's.
[00:27:18]
That's incredibly popular. When our garden starts producing, which we have had a little bit over the winter but not a lot. When our garden starts producing, we have our own produce. Who else do we get food from? Bread, I mean, we get canned goods regularly now from Harris Teeter.
[00:27:41]
Harris Teeter just presented us with a $10,000 check last Friday. The media was all here.
>> Rachel McManaman: Wow, congratulations, that's a huge amount of money.
>> Dr Kim Buch: And they have been partnering with us, but that was the first time that they. So, we'll get a lot of their store brand items and just standard non-perishable stuff, but in addition to that now finally we have.
[00:28:10]
For the first several years we had nothing but non-perishables and now we've been able to branch out a bit.
>> Rachel McManaman: How recent is that?
>> Dr Kim Buch: The Bulb just started this semester. The garden started, as I said, back in, probably didn't get anything really to give away until 2017, even though we started planning sooner.
[00:28:33]
Publix, I think we've had that about two years. So, it just depends on almost somebody you'll know, somebody like one of the students in Nicole's class, service learning class, like mine, she had a contact at the The Bulb. And so, she turned them on to us. And so things like that.
[00:29:02]
So, at any given time one partnership may be fading away, Food Lion is no longer working with us. And then another one comes on board, but our kind of our core source of food is Loaves and Fishes and we buy from them at greatly reduced rates. And then most of our stuff comes from student organizations and university offices that use us a designated charity.
[00:29:34]
>> Rachel McManaman: Right, that's actually one of my questions.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah.
>> Rachel McManaman: [INAUDIBLE] Actually,
>> Dr Kim Buch: Sure.
>> Rachel McManaman: But, I was wondering about the university support and do they support through monetary donations or in kind donations? I know, I was in a sorority here on campus as an undergrad and we were encouraged to volunteer and or donate here.
[00:29:54]
So I-
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, good.
>> Rachel McManaman: We know it's here. But what can you speak to that?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, I would say, at least as much as the our Loaves and Fishes and probably more of the food and other things that we give away is, especially clothing closet stuff, is from the campus community.
[00:30:16]
So, it is the Greek organizations and the other 600 plus student orgs that we have on campus. As well as Psychology, the whole department can adopt the food pantry so that usually over the holidays, business units on campus, or departments on campus engage their employees in something that is service oriented.
[00:30:42]
And so the pantry benefits a great deal from that. So, most of what we give away is donated through the campus community, not through our partners, but through the campus community. And then individuals, like a woman that works in the College of Business on Tuesday was here, and she just brought a big bag full of frozen veggies and she wanted to stock our freezer.
[00:31:07]
She said that she was volunteering here one day and our freezer was empty, and it is sometimes. And the students were opening it up and she said, I made a vow, I do not want that to ever happen again. And so she just, as an individual, she comes and donates.
[00:31:22]
Tons of people donate their gently used professional clothing because. So, the chancellor's wife was one of our early champions of that. And she teamed up with Judy Rose, the athletic director. We got all kinds of very high-end clothing that first year. And then we got a parent's grant.
[00:31:41]
So, we do buy some new clothing with that, and it's a evolving thing.
>> Rachel McManaman: That's great.
>> Dr Kim Buch: But most of it does come from sororities like yours, and that's where we get our volunteers too.
>> Rachel McManaman: Right.
>> Dr Kim Buch: And it works.
>> Rachel McManaman: And these other partners, you mentioned to me Chartwells, The Bulb And then TIAA?
[00:32:03]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yes, yeah, TIAA gives us money.
>> Rachel McManaman: So that was my question.
>> Dr Kim Buch: And they bring groups of employees here to work on service projects.
>> Rachel McManaman: So other partners who do not donate might volunteer?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, we have lots of, not a lot of external partners who bring groups because that's just hard to manage, but TIAA is one of them.
[00:32:28]
And TIAA is in the process, or already did just now, donate a significant donation to our garden. And they may end up being a naming donor for our garden. We've been working with them for a while. I know we've gotten 10,000 plus from them. And then Chartwells donates in kind and nearly expired stuff.
[00:32:52]
The Swipes, that's coming right straight from Chartwells. Right, can you explain the Swipes program to me? Yeah, and you can Google it, too, you might be interested. It's a national organization called Swipe Out Hunger, started by students. And now it's a big national non-profit, and it's basically students that have unlimited Meal Swipes.
[00:33:15]
Their meal plan pays for them to eat as many meals as they want. Well, of course, you know, they don't nearly eat three meals a day which they could. And so Chartwells and other providers across the nation that do the same thing as Chartwells, there's a bunch of them, allows students with unlimited meal plans to donate a certain number, it's usually very small, ours is two a semester.
[00:33:41]
Yeah, and then those donated meals are linked up with students in need and it's literally transferred from one card to another. And it's a national program, which they do amazing things, and it's a good website, too. They've got tons of good information on hunger and food insecurity among college students.
[00:34:00]
And so it's a good source you might wanna check out.
>> Rachel McManaman: Wow, and so students who are purchasing meals at the cafeteria, rather than swiping their card they can just say-
>> Dr Kim Buch: Well, we have to set up a card reader so volunteers go and set up tables outside of Crown and Sovy.
[00:34:21]
And we have a sign out and we have student volunteers saying come on over, doesn't cost you anything, donate meals. And everybody says can I donate if I have unlimited, and everybody wants to do it because it costs them nothing, so it's a win-win. But the business model of Chartwells, if everyone on unlimited meals, they tell me, ate three meals a day they'd go broke.
[00:34:45]
I don't know if that's true, so they have to be very careful in managing that, and I get it. Because your parents when they bought you a meal plan, they wanna know that we're good stewards of that. Because you wanna know that students who are getting those swipes really do need them.
[00:35:08]
So, anyway
>> Rachel McManaman: And in addition to Chartwells, could you speak on some of the resistance, if you've received any?
>> Dr Kim Buch: It was all about space, I think actually, space was our main barrier in just getting started. I think that higher administration also, when we first were looking for space, they were building Sovy, and that is an obscenely fancy high-end, extravagant silly really, place for college students to go eat.
[00:35:46]
So I think it was that juxtaposition of that in your face, high end. They're promoting that and they're building that and they're investing in that, the university that is, the decision makers. And then to have publicity around the fact that, and by the way, we have students who need to shop, who don't have enough to eat.
[00:36:11]
I think there was some of that initially and so we fought a little bit of a push back, I think. Because I think mostly it was people, like university administrators are like me, they thought well college students are privileged you know, they don't need food stamps, they don't need help with eating.
[00:36:30]
And so after we got past that initial, I think, and then seeing that, there's one at UNC Chapel Hill. There's a food pantry that just opened up at NC State. You know, as long as it's not just our students that have this dirty little secret. So I think there was that nationally, as well as locally, a little bit of that, and I think we're way past that now.
[00:36:55]
It's just known that this is a problem that is part of part of being a college student. In fact, there's articles written, I when I read that last paper, one of the articles, the title was College is Making our Students Poor. You know, and it's true, so I mean, it's just a reality and I think we've grown into handling it well.
[00:37:26]
Our administrators aren't embarrassed by that now, but I think it was an issue at the beginning. And I know when I first started getting involved in it, when we first opened, I was very fearful that students would also feel stigmatized. And not want to show up with their fellow students and faculty and staff seeing that they did have this need.
[00:37:52]
>> Rachel McManaman: Do you have any sense of that?
>> Dr Kim Buch: No, not now, again I think that's part of the progress that's been made. Now we're serving a very very small percentage of students, so we're serving under 2% of the student population. At least that's what I wrote in that first article.
[00:38:12]
And if the research that I already told you about say that there's 25% of students that at least at some will be or have been food insecure, that's a big gap to 25. So are some of the students not coming because of perceived stigma, that I don't know.
[00:38:31]
But in terms of my sense is that I get my students here, I was working on Tuesday, one of my students from last year showed up. And she found out it from volunteering here with me last year, and I couldn't remember her name but I remembered. What's your name, and she, it was like yeah.
[00:38:50]
And all my students were there and some of our volunteers shop before they leave, they sign in and shop, so. My sense is no, but what about all the ones that aren't coming.
>> Rachel McManaman: That's true, that's one thing I noticed when I'm walking, how welcoming everyone is, and the chalkboard.
[00:39:09]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Isn't that cute?
>> Rachel McManaman: It's really cute.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, Julia did that.
>> Rachel McManaman: I really like it.
>> Dr Kim Buch: I like that too.
>> Rachel McManaman: Does the pantry work with any other neighboring university student pantries?
>> Dr Kim Buch: No but we have benchmarked others and have been benchmarked.
>> Rachel McManaman: Okay, what does that mean?
[00:39:24]
>> Dr Kim Buch: It means figure out what other people are doing.When we were first looking to open, we benchmarked with Campus Compact and some of the UNC system schools that were members of Campus Compact. And in fact, Campus Compact hosted some webinars for folks who were trying to start food pantries in the UNC system.
[00:39:50]
Most all of the schools in the UNC system now have an on campus food pantry. And so we benchmarked with them to figure out how do you do it, what are your rules? In some places, like we drove, actually Sean and I took some students up in the van.
[00:40:07]
Last year to NC State to see what theirs was like because they serve staff also. And I think that's something that we need to move towards at some point. Because we have maintenance staff and adjunct faculty who live below the poverty line. And so we went up to benchmark them.
[00:40:29]
And then we benchmark VCU, Virginia Commonwealth just because,they gave us all of their,like the food security package and all of their training materials and everything. So and since then, other pantries have benchmarked with us, asked us for our information or literature comparing notes and that sort of thing.
[00:40:52]
>> Rachel McManaman: Right.
>> Dr Kim Buch: But we don't specifically partner with anyone. Yeah, we just had Johnson C. Wales, is it Johnson C. Wales? No.
>> Rachel McManaman: Johnson & Wales.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Johnson & Wales. Sent two students out last semester too, because they are starting a pantry to benchmark with us.
>> Rachel McManaman: Well I interviewed a couple ladies last week with Food Connection.
[00:41:13]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah.
>> Rachel McManaman: And they were telling me that they partnered with Jocelyn and Wills and rescued surplus food and delivered it to people who need it. And it seems Like the food distribution network in Charlotte is very supported and very interconnected.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Since 2012, 2014 when this is starting, I mean, it's more than doubled.
[00:41:41]
I'm not kidding.
>> Rachel McManaman: Wow.
>> Dr Kim Buch: The food reclamation initiatives have more than doubled, I'm certain of it. USC Charlotte started food reclamation 20 years ago, we were early.
>> Rachel McManaman: What's food reclamation?
>> Dr Kim Buch: It's picking up food from our cafeterias, and now is what we do here in our freezers.
[00:42:03]
This Campus Kitchens is taking food from the [INAUDIBLE] and bringing it over here and packing up and putting it in ready to go meals. But for 20 years before that we had student volunteers with our van as parked in the back that would pick up the food and take it uptown.
[00:42:21]
We took it up too. We took food to Urban Ministry Center for two decades. And now that we have campus kitchens. Now we still, there's an excess, so we still send food there. But so even though there are programs like that, and have been for a long time, the number of them, and things like the and all this stuff, it's just It's awesome.
[00:42:44]
And community garden system that's taken off.
>> Rachel McManaman: Yeah so I actually have a colleague who interviewed a past president of the community.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Good.
>> Rachel McManaman: She actually asked me if I could ask you the relationship between the family tree in the community garden. I know you mentioned it a little bit.
[00:43:01]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay, good.
>> Rachel McManaman: Could elaborate.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay, well it's changed. I don't know if she, was that when it was the Levine Scholars' Garden?
>> Rachel McManaman: I couldn't tell you.
>> Dr Kim Buch: It's the one over behind architecture?
>> Rachel McManaman: I couldn't tell you.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Okay well-
>> Rachel McManaman: It might be.
>> Dr Kim Buch: So that's had a lot of transition.
[00:43:15]
It was started by a Levine Scholar. The Levine Scholars actually get a fund to start a charity And he this guy I forget his name because it was a long time ago but he started this garden that's behind architecture walked by I just walked by today. I walked through it to invest to get the broccoli, but it started as a community garden.
[00:43:41]
And it had, and then it changed hands and it got turned over to the garden plot, and they started using that not for a community garden but to train students in gardening.
>> Rachel McManaman: Okay.
>> Dr Kim Buch: And it was a lot of flowers and a yoga pavillion and the hand mix is beautiful.
[00:43:59]
And then they faded it and so they reach up us and we now have most of the beds and the signage in the garden ceases for the genome and the students pantry and then we have students from here who go over there and bring it back but we also have about 12 raise beds here outside and we're totally on those.
[00:44:23]
>> Rachel McManaman: So the community garden on campus is more or less an extension of the student pantry.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Except that it started first. It started first and then it evolved away from you know, veggies and serving at the people. Towards,the garden club took it over and they had different goals and but now it's a shared venture and our intern I actually we also have one of our interns like Sophia that is a community garden director.
[00:45:00]
They're supposed to coordinate with the garden club, the extent of which is happening right now. I don't know but that's the ideal.
>> Rachel McManaman: And so you receive produce. What kind of produce do you recieve?
>> Dr Kim Buch: Over the winter she did really well with broccoli and cabbage and herbs.
[00:45:17]
And then in the warm weather, we have tomatoes and peppers and things like that that tend to be more popular.
>> Rachel McManaman: Do you tend to get a lot of that fresh produce or is it-?
>> Dr Kim Buch: No but in the summer it's when it all comes. So many of our students are gone, we're only open one day a week so we have enough We do have enough.
[00:45:40]
And I have a student who was undergraduate research scholar last summer and she was monitoring that. We did some ways, but overall, it's a popular item. We have lots of vegetarians as I said, so those are very popular items. Yeah and you can walk through really any time you're over there is between Robinson and architecture.
[00:46:02]
okay, I think I know where you talking about. It's got the hammocks.
>> Rachel McManaman: The building around the curve?
>> Dr Kim Buch: There's no building although there's a pavilion and is in it and a garden shed. But it's just a big beautiful garden space with hammocks in. You know, it's cute.
[00:46:20]
>> Rachel McManaman: Yeah.
>> Dr Kim Buch: And then you'll see the signage in there.
>> Rachel McManaman: Okay. Yeah, I think it was actually the president of the garden club.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah. Yep.
>> Rachel McManaman: That rings a bell.
>> Dr Kim Buch: So we partner with her now, with them.
>> Rachel McManaman: That's fantastic. So I did tell you it would be a 45 minute interview.
[00:46:35]
We're approaching the time limit, and I consider [CROSSTALK] So thank you for your time.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Yeah, that's great.
>> Rachel McManaman: Is there anything else you would like to tell me?
>> Dr Kim Buch: No I think.
>> Rachel McManaman: I should have asked you.
>> Dr Kim Buch: No. I think you covered all the basis, I hope it fit in well enough with your needs just even though my mind, you know my background isn't about food.
[00:46:56]
I don't have any expertise in food. I can barely cook. [LAUGH] So you know it wasn't about that or it wasn't even about serving even though I'm a psychologist. It wasn't really about serving at-need people, it was more, I was coming at it from an educator wanting students to learn to serve, and I've done a lot of research in that area.
[00:47:15]
The impact of service on college students who serve. And it is important you know it enhances specific attitudes. It enhances their, there are studies that show it reduces stereotypes about the homeless, people in poverty, all of that stuff. So it's just good for students to serve. And I did forget to tell you this, I have another student, undergraduate scholar whose research I'm supervising.
[00:47:51]
She's also one of our interns with Sofia. Sofia is another scholar this summer but our study is not focusing on clients is focusing on volunteers. And I know this anecdotally but the summer we're gonna do the research We serve more students as volunteers than we serve students as clients, and to me that's huge.
[00:48:17]
>> Rachel McManaman: Interesting, how many student volunteer volunteers do you think you [CROSSTALK]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Well, that's what I am saying, it's an empirical question and we have very bad data. I have stacks of paper forms this high in my office, but now that we've gone on the iPads, I don't know.
[00:48:31]
But a week now, I'm gonna average it, 4 times 5. 20 plus that are here present. And then we have service learning classes, and learning communities who are doing group projects. This is my students that are creating this resource thing. And we have other students who are working on the partnership with The Bulb.
[00:48:57]
And we have students that are doing the meal kits, and we have, you know, all kinds. Lots of students that are, graduate courses. Like you, you're being served. We're serving you now, so that you can you enhance your education. And we have lots of other students. Graduate students in Communications give us marketing, you know, do marketing studies on how can we enhance our marketing.
[00:49:26]
And so, engage scholarship projects, student interns, student orgs. One of our interns, I don't know if she's here today, Autumn, started the Campus Kitchens Project. And she has a whole club. Then they come on Mondays and they package up the food. She drives the van over from Crown and.
[00:49:51]
And they come in here, and they have their, well, it's not here now. But they have their gloves and their sanitation wipes, and they package it up. And so whole groups of students, orgs, and classes, and learning communities. Not to mention the ones that sign up individually online to engage.
[00:50:12]
So it's an empirical question, but I am confident in saying that we have impacted more UNC Charlotte students in learning to serve than being served. I think that's awesome.
>> Rachel McManaman: That's really fantastic, that is really fantastic. It really seems like the pantry serves a dual purpose, so much more than just food.
[00:50:36]
And I think that really speaks to how it functions within the student community, but also the larger community. And creating that sense of caring for one another and community, that's fantastic.
>> Dr Kim Buch: I agree, I agree. So like I say, it wasn't a lot about food, but It wasn't only about food.
[00:50:55]
>> Rachel McManaman: And that's the best part.
>> Dr Kim Buch: But you know lots more about food than I do, I'm sure, and all of that. It's really exciting, I'm glad you're doing it.
>> Rachel McManaman: Thanks very much. Yeah the one thing that I've really taken from these interviews is the community aspect about it.
[00:51:09]
It's much less about the food than it is the benefits that come from it. And help helping others, and creating those relationships.
>> Dr Kim Buch: So it's not just here, if that's what you're finding in general. Well that's cool, that's really cool. Cuz I think a lot of times people look at it as much more transactional.
[00:51:25]
>> Rachel McManaman: Yeah, it's not.
>> Dr Kim Buch: You know, and it's not.
>> Rachel McManaman: Not at all.
>> Dr Kim Buch: Very cool.
>> Rachel McManaman: Thank you so much for coming down here [CROSSTALK]
>> Dr Kim Buch: Thank you, it's a great.
>> Rachel McManaman: It's been so fantastic!
>> Dr Kim Buch: It has been, I love this oral history thing. It's a new research approach.
Food Connection
Mendy Godman, Sue Hawes, and Kim Aprill founded the Charlotte chapter of Food Connection in September 2018. Prior to beginning Food Connection, Godman worked in sales, Hawes in the nonprofit sector, and Aprill was a social worker. Hawes attended Northeastern University and Aprill completed her Masters of Social Work at the University of Buffalo. The trio knew each other prior to establishing Food Connection; their children attended the same preschool. Kim, inspired to act by her research into food insecurity in the Charlotte area, posted a FaceBook status asking if anyone would be interesting in her idea of establishing an organization dedicated to distributing food to those in need in the Charlotte area. Godman and Hawes jumped on board, and with the help of other NC Food Connection chapters, opened the operation in Charlotte. Since coming to fruition, Food Connection has rescued and delivered over 100,00 fresh meals to people in need. Godman, Hawes, and Aprill are currently focused on bringing in new donors and expanding their operations to reach more people in the Charlotte area.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Opening remarks and introductions |
| 0:05:20 | How Mendy, Sue, and Kim became friends |
| 0:07:18 | The history of Food Connection and the creation of the Charlotte chapter |
| 0:13:24 | How Food Connection functions |
| 0:15:22 | Kim shares story about Saint John's and how Food Connection reevaluates its programs regularly |
| 0:18:29 | Meals are delivered to recipients once a week |
| 0:19:52 | Sanitation practices, how the food is packaged, how food is stored |
| 0:25:16 | The clientele/areas in Charlotte Food Connection serves |
| 0:28:17 | Volunteers, Food Connection's community partners, food distribution network in Charlotte |
| 0:35:02 | Food waste, how Food Connection reduces food waste |
| 0:38:08 | Food Connection's partners and connecting Charlotteans who want to help with other nonprofits |
| 0:41:18 | Donor and recipient eligibility criteria |
| 0:42:27 | Good Samaritan Law, legality of food distribution |
| 0:45:29 | Resistance from donors and recipients about getting involved |
| 0:48:20 | Spreading the word about Food Connection, concluding thoughts |
[00:00:07]
>> [MUSIC]
[00:00:14]
>> Speaker 1: Today is Wednesday, March 27th, at 10 o'clock in the morning. My name is Rachel McMahon, and today I will be interviewing Mindy Goddman, Sue Paws, and April-
>> Speaker 2: Kim April.
>> Speaker 1: Kim April, okay, threw me for a loop there, I'm sorry.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 1: All three are co-founders of the Charlotte Chapter of Food Connection.
[00:00:36]
This interview is part of the Queen's Garden Oral History Project, a project collecting oral histories of local Charlotte teens involved in food distribution, urban agriculture, and community gardens in the Charlotte Area. Food Connection is a non-profit organization that collects surplus fresh meals from restaurants, caterers and institutions and community partners who feed those in need in order to reduce waste and ease the pain of immediate hunger.
[00:01:02]
Food Connection operates in Charlotte, North Carolina, Black Mountain, North Carolina, and Asheville, North Carolina. Thus far, Food Connection has rescued and delivered over 100,000 fresh meals, and delivered them to people in need. So first I'd like to begin with some basic questions. So if you could each go around and say your name, introduce yourself, where you grew up, how you got to Charlotte, how you got interested or involved in Food Connection.
[00:01:29]
>> Speaker 3: I'm Mindy Godwin. I'm actually from Spartanburg, South Carolina. After college I got a position doing Hospitality Management sales in Charlotte. So I moved here. Gosh, it's been 19 years since I've been in Charlotte, so I feel like a Charlotte team now. Coming from sales, I actually stopped working when I had my first child.
[00:01:53]
So I have been out of that corporate environment, gosh, for 13 years. And this past September, we kinda came together and realized there was a need in the city and we just wanted to do something about it. So we started researching and digging. Kim actually spearheaded the idea.
[00:02:10]
And Sue and I just kind of jumped on board cuz it sounded awesome. And so we just want a connection, and we go into institutions of caterers, restaurants, and rescue their unused food. Previously they were just throwing this food in the trash. And then we did look at some numbers.
[00:02:29]
40% of all waste in the US is food waste, and that blows our mind. And we even dug deeper and realized one in three families in Mecklenburg County are food insecure. So it just seemed like a normal thing, why are we not doing this? Why is this not happening in the city besides Charlotte?
[00:02:49]
So we just decided to make it our mission and start rescuing food and getting it to those in need.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, who's next?
>> Speaker 4: My name is Sue Hawes. I moved here from Boston in 2004. So I've been here for quite a while now. I was in the marketing world and my previous job before Food Connection was doing marketing for a nonprofit.
[00:03:11]
So I knew I wanted to stay in the nonprofit world. And when I heard about this opportunity, it was something I was very much interested in. I've helped at a lot of different nonprofits, volunteering in Charlotte, and I knew there was such a need. And because there is so much food waste, there is no reason for people in Charlotte to not have three meals a day.
[00:03:36]
>> Speaker 2: I am Kim April, and I am from Buffalo, New York, originally. I moved to Charlotte in 2001, actually September 2001, right before 9/11. I have a master's in social work, so when I graduated from graduate school I just moved to Charlotte. No job yet, but I wanted to be in warmer weather basically.
[00:04:01]
And so yeah, so I did social work, counseling and case management with children for a long time, until I had my two children. And then I was a stay at home mom for a little while and then I started my own business doing sort of sensory play with children.
[00:04:25]
And then I'd just been searching for a few years. I was searching for my niche that I really want to be in. And my husband took a trip to California and came back and talked about how some of the restaurants there have these stickers in the window that said, we are a 0% food waste restaurant.
[00:04:47]
So he got back and told me about that, and that's just what got me thinking about food waste. I honestly hadn't really thought about it that much before, to tell you the truth. But I talked to Mindy and Sue. We also started doing research and the statistics were very sad.
[00:05:09]
So yeah, and now I just feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing and my calling.
>> Speaker 1: That's sweet. So how did the three of you get connected? Were you friends before Food Connection or how did this partnership kind of begin?
>> Speaker 4: Kind of a crazy story, but all of our kids went to the same preschool.
[00:05:30]
So I knew Kim in passing. We were acquaintances, I would say.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah.
>> Speaker 4: Mindy and I were friends because our littlests were boyfriend and girlfriend.
>> Speaker 2: At the age of two.
>> Speaker 4: At the age of two? So Mindy and I were friends, and Kim and Mindy were friends..
[00:05:50]
And one day Kim posted on Facebook about this great idea. And I had commented and was very serious, but I didn't know if she I was serious at the time. Just saying Mindy and I wanted to help out with this. And then I think it was just a few days later we met.
[00:06:09]
We were doing some brainstorming of ideas, of what we could call this nonprofit. And I had come up with the name Food Connection. So I actually went online to purchase the domain, so we could start our own website, nonprofit, get our 501(c)(3) paperwork done. And we came across a place in Asheville called Food Connection.
[00:06:31]
So we figured why reinvent the wheel? We went up to Asheville to meet the director. Her name is Flory. And we had a great meeting. And we were aligned on the same mission. So that's sort of how it took off. And so rather than spending time creating a new nonprofit, we wanted to just become our own chapter, so that we could just start helping people quicker and fulfilling the need quicker.
[00:07:01]
>> [BLANK AUDIO]
>> Speaker 1: That's awesome.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a pretty wild story.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, Facebook, it's interesting how social media connects us.
>> Speaker 4: Yes, yes, it is.
>> Speaker 2: It can be great and also not so great. Definitely good things.
>> Speaker 1: Really, though. So I sent Mindy a questionnaire prior to this interview, and on the sheet you answered that the Charlotte operation began in September 2018.
[00:07:27]
So roughly six to seven months ago. And I just have some basic questions about Food Connection in general. So is Food Connection specific to North Carolina or is it part of a larger nationwide organization?
>> Speaker 4: Well, it was created in Asheville. They created it in Asheville and then.
[00:07:52]
I wish I could give you more specifics, exactly when, but then they launched a Black Mountain Chapter. So when Sue had Googled the domain name, we just realized that there was already a Food Connection going on. And it wasn't in Washington Or California was in our state two and a half three hours away, so it just made sense.
[00:08:12]
So right now it's kinda Statewide thing, but I'm pretty sure the goal is to expand as big and as far away as we can get just because it makes sense.
>> Speaker 2: When we are doing our research, there are a lot of other organizations in the country, that aren't Food Connection but are doing a similar thing.
[00:08:33]
So we have found other organizations out there in big cities mostly, that do the same kinda food recipe, but just Food Connection is just in North Carolina right now.
>> Speaker 1: Sure.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 1: Does the Charlotte chapter have contact with the black mountain in Asheville chapters? Do you guys do regular meetings or events or what is that relationship like?
[00:08:58]
>> Speaker 3: We're all very close, everyone we've met, they are just so sweet and they have the biggest hearts. So we're actually going there next for a couple days for an event they're putting on so we can support them. They have board meetings once a month that we try to be a part of with weekly calls, we're very much a a big team.
[00:09:19]
>> Speaker 1: That's great, and Mandy, you mentioned that one in three families in Mecklenburg County are food insecure? What, when you got interested in Food Connection and this need for food, this hunger, what was some of the research that you were looking at? Was it the Chutti Study for example, or how did you find this information?
[00:09:48]
Or what kind of information were you looking at?
>> Speaker 4: We weren't specific to families or children, we were just doing research. For a couple of years a volunteer to Urban Ministries serving in the soup kitchen on Mondays. And when I realized that they serve 300 trades every day at lunch, and that's not including all the other organizations, the rescue mission that serve.
[00:10:10]
That's just a tiny population. So you know there was a need, because then you think about all the people who weren't able to make it to these shelters. All of our churches used to do room in the Inn. And actually, you can just drive down the street, and you become aware of how much there is a need.
[00:10:30]
At my children's school, I've also volunteered, teared up buildings elementary until they merged. On Fridays, they do these little red backpacks, and so these children go home with foods. And there's Pop Tarts and crackers and a box of mac and cheese, which is great to fill their tummies, but it's processed box, cans.
[00:10:47]
So it really isn't the most nutritious. And when I went to second heart Harvest to pick up these bags one time, and I picked up 100 for this tiny school. And as you're delivering them, you're realizing that 50% of the class are getting these bags, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
[00:11:05]
So we researched and did more digging, but you can just look around, and it is in your face. So those who are oblivious or aren't aware just really aren't looking up because anywhere you go in our city,there are and everyone has their different opinions. But there are people holding signs or you see them sleeping and these encampments under bridges, so there's just hungry people.
[00:11:29]
Not to mention these communities that are food deserts and there are no grocery stores right within walking distance, or they're taking three buses. So that was eye opening because I think sometimes we take for granted. I have a hair cedar and a public across the street half a mile from my house.
[00:11:47]
So of course that's that ego-centric mindset that everyone has what I have, but they don't. So when you started rally we read some articles about the food deserts, and realized how many different places and ways these families were having to go just to get groceries from a grocery store.
[00:12:04]
And that's not good wholesome fresh produce for nutritious meals, they're buying what they can afford. I'm sorry, I keep breaking up.
>> Speaker 1: No.
>> Speaker 4: But even when you think about if I go to the grocery store, I bought grapes one time. And a lot of times, I hate to say this out loud, but I will take some out cuz they rang it up as $17.00 for buying crisps.
[00:12:24]
That I'm forcing my kids to eat and whenever I saw that I go, good. But Masha I didn't want to say it cuz you know what? Let me just put this back. So I paid for them but I can go to McDonald's and get a double cheeseburger for a dollar.
[00:12:37]
And when you open that double cheeseburger all you see is grease and fat coming out, but it's what people can afford. I can't even get into the whole other topic of healthcare and how we're taking care of our bodies and obesity. Cuz we don't know until you're in that position what you do to survive.
[00:12:54]
But there are families doing this,and so I think our mission is to get fresh, nutritious, good, viable food into these families and children's tummies. And because why not? Eating an healthy nutritious meal shouldn't determine how much you have in bank account. It's a human right living in this world we should all have that right.
[00:13:20]
>> Speaker 1: My gosh no please the more the better I love it So,
>> Speaker 1: Food Connection receives surplus food from this healthy, nutritious food from food donors, and then delivers it to the community partners, who then transport it to the recipients, correct?
>> Speaker 3: Sort of, so we have several different donors, the bigger ones are large universities.
[00:13:52]
So Johnston and Wales for example we would pick up once a week from there, and we transport the food ourselves to other nonprofit in need. So we take it from A to B, which is really exciting to load our trunks and see how much food there is and what kind of food.
[00:14:11]
And then give it to the recipients who are, they're so grateful and so thankful and it's really something special to be a part of, it's a great feeling.
>> Speaker 2: All our recipients for now thus far places where people actually resides. So we are taking directly to them .The non profit doesn't to have then distribute it out another lace.
[00:14:38]
The people that we are feeding actually lives in that place where we are giving them the the food.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, so how much shelter-
>> Speaker 3: We have transition shelters, yes, the transition housing. Ken has some great stories of one of our recipients. We do take to Salvation Army Center of Hope, so the women and children shelter.
[00:14:59]
And that's probably the largest one, but then we have a lot of smaller other partners. We actually recently started taking food to a place called Camille's House. And it's a house on Clayton road with just three bedrooms, and so she takes women and children, so we go from these small places to these huge places.
[00:15:18]
But Kim really should share about St. John's Place, that's amazing.
>> Speaker 2: So we have St. John's, that's a transitional regional housing with supportive housing communities. And I think there's 34 small apartments there. And the people who live there just have a tiny refrigerator, they don't have a full kitchen.
[00:15:38]
And so every other day of the week, they're responsible for buying their own food, and making it on a very limited income usually. [COUGH]. So yeah, I go there, they know that I'm gonna arrive Thursdays at around 3 PM. And find out people start coming out of their apartments to help me get out of the car, and they're so excited when they see the food.
[00:16:04]
They're like, do you have the food? And they've just been so pleased with the food and they all helped me. And we've recently created a survey on Survey Monkey for recipients to make sure that everybody was enjoying the food and that it's not going to waste there as well.
[00:16:21]
And the comment that I received from one of the social workers there was that day, that's probably the only full meal the residents there eat all week, cuz they're just doing what they can to survive the other days. So we saw that, and we thought, okay, let's find [LAUGH] another donor that maybe we can bring them food twice a week instead of once a week, just because they're so grateful and they really need it.
[00:16:53]
So, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: That's sweet, that's tough to see. It must be difficult sometimes. So for that location, you delivered food twice a week?
>> Speaker 2: Well, we talked about starting to do that if we can. We're not in the position yet to be able to do that. So right now we're still just once a week but we have a new donor that's probably gonna be starting in the next couple of weeks.
[00:17:19]
So we might be able to start bringing them stuff twice a week. I don't know. We're just doing our best to distribute it around to [LAUGH] the most needy people. So we're also focused on some more recipients that we might start with. It's all a process, and we kind of reevaluate every month or so where the food is going.
[00:17:47]
Is that the best fit for the donor and the recipient? The kinds of food we're getting, are those the kinds of things that those people will eat at the recipient location? Cuz sometimes the food, well actually, we've gotten all pretty standard food. But if you got something that people weren't familiar with, that they didn't grow up eating, we would just worry that that would then go to waste a little bit, too.
[00:18:13]
So we're constantly reevaluating to see if everything is the best fit and if we can get the food there as quickly as possible so the locations have to match up and things like that.
>> Speaker 1: So do all the recipient receive meals once a week. Is that pretty standard?
[00:18:35]
>> Speaker 3: That's pretty standard right now.
>> Speaker 1: Right now? I'm assuming there's plans to expand.
>> Speaker 3: Yes, that is our goal. We tried to start small so that we could get a feel and figure out how it all works and who's in need and who's donating. So we've kinda gotten it down to the science at this point, with what we have.
[00:18:55]
So our next step is reaching out and grabbing more donors. And as we get more donors, we need more recipients, and sometimes it's hard to find. In the beginning, we had a lot of resistance from recipients. No, we can't take your food, we have X, Y, and Z standards.
[00:19:11]
And we just had to overcome those obstacles, and in same way we had resistance from donors. There's lots that they were worried about, liability or somebody getting sick. So in the beginning, and we're gonna start facing this the more we grow and the more we do is overcoming the obstacles of why people automatically say no.
[00:19:28]
But when you talk about food, sometimes it's kind of tainted. It's no, someone's going to get sick. But you know what, if you're hungry, you're gonna eat the food. And if you're willing to serve this food to your clients and to your students, then I'm pretty sure it's good food.
[00:19:43]
As long as it's prepared in good faith, we're able to distribute it to others in need.
>> Speaker 1: And are there, I don't want to say sanitation practices, but are there any measures to ensure that that food is prepared properly, or stored properly, or maintained so that it preserves the quality when it gets from A to B?
[00:20:07]
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, so at the university, if it's food that's been out in the buffet and it's had a sneeze guard on it. And so the excess food is then stored in the cooler until we're able to come pick it up, because we need to make sure everything is the right temperature before we take it and give it to the recipients.
[00:20:28]
So there are a few measures in place that have to be followed in order for us to be able to accept the food.
>> Speaker 2: It also has to be dated with the date that the food was prepared and labeled with what's inside. And we try to have everything less than three days old, three days old or less.
[00:20:53]
So we don't really have anything that would be a week old, let's say. So usually if the university starts collecting the food on a Monday, we would pick it up on Wednesday or Thursday, so usually about an average of two or three days old.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and how was this food packaged once its,
[00:21:15]
>> Speaker 1: I guess obtained from these institutions. Cuz I know just from my experience of friendship trays, then again they prepare it themselves but they have special cartons and a sealing type of plastic machine. So what does that transport container look like?
>> Speaker 3: They kind of remind you of to catering trays.
[00:21:40]
So they're these big foil pans with lids that are tightly sealed. So as long as it is behind a sneeze guard and kept warm, I wish I could tell you the certain temperature.
>> Speaker 1: That's okay [LAUGH].
>> Speaker 3: As long as it goes straight from there to the pans to cold storage.
[00:21:53]
Now, they can't take it from the hot bar and leave it on the counter for two hours, it's kind of an immediate process. So it's just actually large foil trays with tightly covered lids. And then it's put in the cold storage and we just pick it up and we have to go from point A straight to B.
[00:22:11]
We can't ride around with it in our car, take it home, sit in our fridge. It's just kind of a smooth process.
>> Speaker 1: And where do you store that because, if I remember correctly, we're meeting here, at Playbook because you guys don't have a central location. So do you have freezers?
[00:22:27]
I'm assuming you have to have freezer space, somewhere. So where is that?
>> Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry-
>> Speaker 2: No, we don't, yet. That is one of our goals. But the donors store everything for us cuz they're such large operations, large kitchens with the walk-in freezers and refrigerators. So they keep it stored there for us until we come get it.
[00:22:50]
And then they just kinda roll it out on one of those rolling carts, when they see us come in the kitchen. And so we haven't had that yet, that we've had to have cold storage, but we do hope to get it. So that if a caterer for example has food leftover at 11 o'clock at night, and we can't bring it somewhere right away, we can still take it and put it in our own storage, and then bring it the next day.
[00:23:16]
We're not at that point yet but we hope to be, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: And so when the food is delivered, is it still in those large containers or are they individually packaged?
>> Speaker 3: No, they are still in the large containers. So institutions are taking it right from their cold storage, put it in our car, and most of our deliveries are within 10, 20 minutes.
[00:23:40]
So we're not driving an hour away. And we take it straight there and they either put it in their cold storage or it's served immediately, either reheated or the recipients or the residents come and take the food to their rooms to cook, warm up.
>> Speaker 2: Right, that's the only, St. John's Place, where I was talking about going on Thursdays.
[00:24:05]
We provided the social workers there up front with a lot of Tupperware. So what they do is we bring it to the office and immediately the social workers dish it out into individual tupperware containers and then basically the residents kind of line up at the door and they hand it out to them and then they have to bring their tupperware back the next Thursday so that it can be reused.
[00:24:30]
But aside from them, everybody else basically keeps it in the aluminum pans and then either just dishes it out from there, or whatever they, a lot of times supplement the meal they're already making with some of our food, because we never know exactly how much we're going to get.
[00:24:48]
So places like Salvation Army Center of Hope will take any amount we can give them. So they might already be making dinner that night and they might say, okay, we gave you a lot of macaroni and cheese, we can add this in to what we're currently making or else refrigerate it for the next day and add them to the lunch the next day.
[00:25:10]
They all do it a little bit differently. So, yeah.
>> Speaker 1: So you never really know when you're going to an institution or a caterer how much food you're going to get? So, I'm just wondering how do you ensure that you distribute food amongst these different groups, I don't wanna say equally, but to ensure that they're all getting their meals if you're kind of up in the air guessing what you're going to get?
[00:25:43]
>> Speaker 2: So, when we start with a donor, we usually call it a trial period. Probably like a two week trial period. And they start seeing how much they're gonna have on average. We usually say that in order for us to come pick it up it has to be more than 50 pounds.
[00:26:00]
So we can kinda can assess the general situation and then each week we come up with an average of how much they'll give us. And then, if we need to switch the recipient to a different nonprofit based on how much that donor is giving us or the type of food, we'll just reassess and switch it up.
[00:26:25]
But we wouldn't come pick up like ten pounds, for example. And all the donors pretty much know that. They're going to put everything into these aluminum pans for us. I would say our average maybe is, would you say 70 pounds? That's what I was thinking, yes. Probably an average of 70 pounds.
[00:26:44]
And so like I said most of the recipients for now are happy with any amount of food. They're not like, okay, it's less than a hundred pounds, we don't want it, because that can't feed everybody. They're just happy to get whatever we bring them usually.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so, the food insecure clientele, how far reaching are these recipients?
[00:27:10]
Is it only in the south part of town or is it?
>> Speaker 4: We're trying just to stay in Charlotte, we were picking up in Gastonia and Belmont. And actually, what worked out really well was we handed off the food from Belmont Abbey to a local woman, who is picking it up there for us and distributing close by.
[00:27:33]
Because we also want to be environmentally conscious of what we're doing, and so we don't want to be wasting all of this gas to drive 45 minutes away, if there's somebody locally that can do that for us. So I would say we're trying to stay within a 20-mile range.
[00:27:49]
>> Speaker 1: And do you have any trouble reaching any specific areas within that 20-mile range?
>> Speaker 4: We haven't yet, no. And as we continue to grow will have more volunteers that will be helping to drive and distribute the food.
>> Speaker 1: Sorry I'm just looking at my questions.
>> Speaker 4: That's okay, go ahead.
[00:28:14]
>> Speaker 1: Speaking of volunteers that I know I do have questions about that, but how many volunteers do you have? And how do you recruit volunteers or get the word out about Food Connection since you are a relatively new organization in this area?
>> Speaker 4: So we had a big launch party, was that three weeks ago now?
[00:28:40]
Three or four weeks ago. So when people entered we had a big signup sheet, asking if people would like to volunteer. So we had maybe 12 people sign up for that. We had a few people contact us through social media that they heard about us. So we've had one volunteer and they've been doing some research for us on new donors and creating a spreadsheet.
[00:29:05]
We had another volunteer who baked cookies for us for an event. There's just so many ways that they can get involved and so we don't wanna turn anybody away if they don't feel like driving and dropping off food. So we can find something for everybody.
>> Speaker 1: Now do you have drivers on a regular basis?
[00:29:28]
>> Speaker 5: I just wanna say hi, thanks for all you guys are doing.
>> Speaker 4: Hi!
>> Speaker 5: I follow you on Facebook.
>> Speaker 4: Thank you!
>> Speaker 2: Thank you.
>> Speaker 5: See you.
>> Speaker 1: I guess that's proof of the social media reach right there.
>> Speaker 2: So right now we we haven't had a need for drivers yet because the three of us have been able to handle the pickups and deliveries so far.
[00:29:55]
But we are about to start using volunteers for that. So we are at that point, we have a volunteer list. And once we start, I believe with this new donor we are going to create, probably a assign a genius for people to plug in the days and times that we need food picked up and delivered and see if people can fill in some of those for us so that we can start focusing on more growth and things like that.
[00:30:26]
>> Speaker 1: That's awesome.
>> Speaker 3: We also have on our website a link for anyone who wants to volunteer, so they can go and fill in the information and it automatically sends us an email. So then we can follow up with them. So there's lots of ways to get involved.
[00:30:42]
>> Speaker 1: Great. That's awesome. So the website, it displays the list of food donors, the recipients, the community partners, I think that the role of the donors and the recipients is kind of self explanatory but could you guys explain what the community partners do? Are they similar to donors or what does that mean?
[00:31:08]
>> Speaker 3: Some partners maybe donate financially, they allow us to use their space. There are so many other ways that they help. So they may not necessarily donate food but they support our mission and back us up.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so, two examples I can think of are Town Brewing, that's where we had our launch party and they were great helping us get that started and letting us have a silent auction there.
[00:31:37]
And they were big supporters and then, what was the second one? And then Cataba Heights Baptist Church, that's the organization that has taken over our pickup from Belmont Abbey College. So they're picking up and delivering food to local organizations in Belmont or Gastonia. So we consider them a community partner cause they're not a donor or a recipient.
[00:32:02]
But they're helping us out.
>> Speaker 1: Right.
>> Speaker 2: Basically.
>> Speaker 4: Some of the other ones sort of help with networking. So there's Share Charlotte. Which is a nonprofit. And they sort of get together and share other nonprofits, if they have event coming up they'll share that, they offer different networking events, grant writing classes like that.
[00:32:27]
So also people that help us spread the word, that would be considered a community partner for us.
>> Speaker 1: Has it been hard to find those community partners since you guys are new?
>> Speaker 3: I've been honestly dumbfounded and amazed. There's not been on person that I have mentioned, either personally or at these events or networking opportunities, where when you tell them what you're doing, how can I support you?
[00:32:51]
What can I do? And a lot of people the first thing they say is, well I work full time but I would love to support you in any way because it makes sense. It's just a genius idea, that again, we can't really know until we're already doing it.
[00:33:03]
So I haven't encountered one person, when I explain to them what are our mission and our goal and how we're doing this, when they were like, that's never gonna work. What are you doing? Are you all crazy? So the community and those we have spoke with have been so supportive.
[00:33:18]
Just because it's a good thing that should have already been happening here actually.
>> Speaker 1: It's so nice to have that support.
>> Speaker 3: I heard an interesting fact the other day that they said if we took all of the food waste in America, so that 40%, and fed just the hungry with it, all of those hungry people would be getting 9,000 calories a day.
[00:33:42]
>> Speaker 1: That's incredible.
>> Speaker 3: So there's no reason for this to be happening.
>> Speaker 1: Well it's interesting you say that because when I interviewed Lucy Carter Bush she said it's not a problem of food, it's the problem of distribution because we have plenty of food to go around but it's getting it to those who need it.
[00:33:58]
>> Speaker 2: Right, exactly, yeah. So we always think, try to come to us before you do a canned goods drive or something like that. Try to see what's already made out there, what's already prepared that was gonna get thrown away.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah.
>> Speaker 2: By amazing chefs by the way [LAUGH]
[00:34:16]
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, this isn't food we're cooking.
>> Speaker 2: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 4: We're actually going on Monday to speak with the school just about little simple things they can do at home. Because it's not even that you have to go rescue hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food, it can start at home.
[00:34:34]
So if you're gonna have rice for dinner, you don't need to prepare a whole box of rice. So whatever you're gonna eat that night, if you don't eat it you save your leftovers, and there are other things like planning your meals out ahead so that you don't have food waste.
[00:34:53]
Even composting at home. There's just so many little things we can start with.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so I actually have I have a question regarding that.
>> Speaker 4: Sure.
>> Speaker 1: So since you brought it up I'm gonna go off track a little bit and we can come back to the partners.
[00:35:08]
But so the reducing waste part is a unique component to Food Connection. And you are going to a school on Monday. So the waste reduction, reduce part, is that something that you guys regularly advocate or educate or is there any sort of outreach to teach the public about proper food waste practices, I suppose?
[00:35:36]
>> Speaker 4: I would say our number one goal right now is to be helping to feed the hungry and collect the surplus food. I think we're very passionate about teaching the younger generation about food waste and how we can help in the future. Right now there are just not enough hours in the day to do all of that.
[00:35:56]
But I would love to be speaking with more schools and educating people more on how we can reduce waste.
>> Speaker 2: I think an educational component is down the line somewhere once we're a little bit more established, putting together something like that would be something we'd love to do.
[00:36:15]
For now we just occasionally have social media posts that will give tips, tips for reducing food waste at home or statistics, little things here and there, but right now it's just social media. [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 4: And sometimes I think we're even creating new habits in our own children, or and it's just bringing awareness of things that you can do.
[00:36:38]
If we have leftovers my daughter and I make brown bag lunches, and we just go out and find them. There's people everywhere who are hungry, on the streets, or even when you go out to dinner, get that half a cheeseburger and fries you didn't eat and put it in a to go box.
[00:36:52]
There's always someone who's in need. And so if we start those practices with our kids, and it's just gonna catch on, and that's going to become their habit. They're not gonna know any different. So when they're our age, they're gonna do the same. When it's just starting that ball rolling.
[00:37:08]
>> Speaker 1: Right, right. So does Food Connection reduce waste in any other ways?
>> Speaker 1: On my questions I put such as environmentally friendly packaging, but that's not. But what are the other ways that you guys strive to reduce food waste in your day to day operations?
>> Speaker 4: Well it's funny you say that because that's one thing that we have really started to think of and become more aware of.
[00:37:33]
Right now we're transporting food and these big tin foil pans. And one of our donors had asked for us to use the metal ones, just wash them and bring them back. Because we're trying to end food waste, but how many now aluminum tins are we throwing or recycle?
[00:37:49]
So it's a cycle, and so we're trying to tackle one battle, but there is so many other ways that maybe we're creating waste in other ways that we're trying to figure out and create a solution to correct.
>> Speaker 1: Awesome. Okay, I just have a couple other questions about the community partners.
[00:38:08]
I'm gonna go back to that now if that's okay. So are you guys partnered with any other kind Meals on Wheels services in Charlotte or Mecklenburg County?
>> Speaker 2: Not yet, no, but we're always reaching out to find more partners all the time. And so tonight actually we are participating in an event at Free Range Brewing that's put on by the Food Policy Council.
[00:38:35]
And there will be some other organizations there who are tackling food waste in Charlotte. So we're always looking for how we can all partner together. So I know there's a woman there who has a mobile food truck, she rescues produce.
>> Speaker 1: Is it the Bulb?
>> Speaker 2: Yes.
>> Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.
[00:38:56]
>> Speaker 2: So I mean, we might try to talk to her about getting some of the food we get maybe onto her truck, where she would drive it to the food desert neighborhoods. We're just always looking for how we can all kind of work together.
>> Speaker 1: Right, and so how can, you mentioned the website for volunteers, but how can those interested in donating, receiving your partnering, get involved with Food Connection?
[00:39:20]
>> Speaker 4: There's a link for that too. Yes, we have links on the website for everything. Volunteers, donors, recipients, so they can go there and let us know. I guess a lot of our social media has really hit home [COUGH] sorry, and maybe a month ago I had an organization have a catering training event all week.
[00:39:39]
So they contacted me about picking up their food. [COUGH] sorry, I'm getting all choked up. And it was maybe total 200 pounds, it was a one time event, but because of social media they knew to reach out to us. So we just hope that we can start getting our name out there and more awareness so that when these opportunities happen they know who to contact, instead of throwing it in the trash.
[00:40:02]
And if we're not able to pick it up, it's kind of the point of our name, we wanna connect the dots. So contact us and we have a list, we'll be happy to tell you. Where to take it, or how to get it to those people. So, yeah, our website has lots of good stuff.
[00:40:16]
>> Speaker 2: I do love that connection component to it, because we work with several people. And while we're just focused on prepared foods, I've had people call and say, I have all this extra ice cream, I have all this extra milk and eggs, do you know anyone that can use it?
[00:40:31]
So we will have that person connect, so and so. Or we knew someone that had lots of extra fruits and vegetables so we put them in touch with the bulb. And so even though it's not part of our mission because it's not prepared foods, we love being able to connect other people in the community.
[00:40:49]
>> Speaker 1: I think that really speaks to the strength of the Charlotte community involved in food distribution that you touched on a little bit ago Mandy. The support seems like it's really there and that there's a lot of passionate people in this area about getting food to those who need it most.
[00:41:06]
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And just the size of our city with the number of restaurants, universities, catering companies, there's just so much we can be doing.
>> Speaker 1: Right. And is there any eligibility criteria for donors or recipients?
>> Speaker 2: There is no eligibility criteria for recipients. We definitely don't want anything to hold anybody back and we don't want the food to go to waste.
[00:41:33]
So we don't have anything, you have to have below low a certain income level. No, there's nothing like that and for donors it's just basically can you package it the way we need to packaged? Can we get more than 50 pounds per week on average? Is the kitchen staff on board with doing it all for us?
[00:41:56]
And we weigh the food and then provide the donors with how many pounds they've donated for tax purposes. So sometimes it's good if they have a scale they can weigh the food on. It's not a criteria, we can weigh it ourselves too. But we like to just go in and talk to the kitchen staff and make sure everybody's on board and they understand the procedures.
[00:42:19]
They understand the labeling criteria and stuff like that. I'm going to switch gears on you guys, looking at the website, there's mention of a Good Samaritan law.
>> Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the Good Samaritan law and kind of the legal aspects of food distribution?
[00:42:41]
>> Speaker 3: So in 1996, Bill Clinton passed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act. And this is to protect restaurant's caterers, the donors in our case, from any liability. So as long as they prepare their food in a clean environment in good faith, then it can go to feed those in need.
[00:43:03]
And as long as again, it's prepared in good faith. And because of health regulations and the health department, all these places are or they're gonna get shut down. So we really couldn't go into Kim's house and take 25 pounds of her fried chicken to someone because just it's not up to code.
[00:43:22]
So thankfully, because of that legislation as long as it's prepared in good faith then it can go to feed those in need. But now we do have to take it straight from point A to B. And that's the only really regulation.
>> Speaker 1: Great.
>> Speaker 3: Or, I guess, protection for those companies, which are some of the obstacles because, in their mind, it's, no, it's a liability.
[00:43:44]
So we just kinda have to educate them and inform them that it's okay. You're feeding hungry people and they're hungry.
>> Speaker 1: Is that some of the resistance that you receive from donors that you mentioned earlier?
>> Speaker 2: Yes, there are various scared of liability.
>> Speaker 1: Really?
>> Speaker 2: I mean, it's understandable.
[00:44:00]
>> Speaker 3: Absolutely.
>> Speaker 2: There are a lot of [LAUGH] lawsuits out there. So we just again have to talk to them about that and make them feel comfortable with what they're doing. And then we like to provide updates with where the food is going to. Some stories about how the food was received, just to make them feel more comfortable.
[00:44:20]
And Johnson & Wales University has asked for an update on the amount of pounds donated per month. So that makes them feel good, and they like to report that.
>> Speaker 2: But yeah [LAUGH].
>> Speaker 4: We're really trying to give donors, there's no reason for them to say no. It's really a win-win cuz once we take that food off their hands, we're taking on the liability and it's tax right off for them.
[00:44:53]
So there's really, we are sometimes confused as why there is pushback. And I do think that the past has sort of scared people little bit away from it. And I think that's why we do have so much more food waste because of lawsuits that have happened in the past.
[00:45:13]
But if they're going through us, it's really a win-win and we're trying to make it as easy as possible for them.
>> Speaker 1: What's some of the resistance that you receive from the recipients?
>> Speaker 4: We've had a couple who go back but we have these standards and it has to be x, y and z.
[00:45:38]
But I just don't think they're quite aware of what we are bringing. We try to show pictures but literally until they get their first delivery they just have no idea. They just can't comprehend that this is what we are doing. So and I don't wanna name names but yeah, we've had a couple who just, they have enough, but you know they don't.
[00:45:59]
But again, it kinda goes back to what we were saying about our partners and working with other nonprofits. We have tried, in the beginning we worked with some larger nonprofits who feed the hungry and we came to realize they do have funding and they are getting resources. So our mission is to kinda get those underneath that scale.
[00:46:19]
Those who maybe aren't aware, or don't have funding, or they're doing it themselves. The supportive housing communities are a great example, a couple of the other ones that we picked up. They're not getting large checks from all these corporate sponsors and donors to prepare the food, it's them on their own.
[00:46:35]
So there are so many wonderful nonprofits who do feed the hungry. And if we need to, we can help supplement. But they're up and rolling, they're well-oiled machines. So we like to find the one or two single guys who really are hungry and maybe don't have any support or funding coming in.
[00:46:54]
>> Speaker 1: Right.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I think maybe the recipients have a picture in their head maybe of soggy sandwiches or leftover, stale subs or something like that. So I think until they see what it is that we're bringing to them, it's hard for them to say yes and try to figure out what they're gonna do with this food every week.
[00:47:18]
One of our new recipients is a homeless shelter for teenagers. And so they feed them lunch every day. And there are some organizations that volunteer to bring in lunch. But if no one has volunteered for that day, the staff actually cooks at home to bring food in. And these are social workers, so these are people that are not making a lot of money, probably don't have the time to be cooking for these teenagers.
[00:47:44]
But they do it because they love them. And so we have been bringing in barbecue for them weekly. And I'm hoping to bring in more food to them so maybe two or three times a week. Because it's amazing what they're doing and they don't get a lot funding.
[00:48:03]
So we don't want people to be using their own money and their paycheck To feed these people that they're working with.
>> Speaker 1: Right, that is difficult. So, I told Mandy it would be a 45-minute interview and we're approaching actually 48 minutes. So in respect for y-all's time, because I know you're very busy woman, I just have some concluding questions.
[00:48:31]
What would like the public to know about Food Connection that you think they don't know, or is a misconception?
>> Speaker 2: That's a good question. Yeah [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 3: Good, we're here, maybe that's just creating awareness that there is an organization. That's willing to rescue food and feed those in need, because again, it hasn't happened here.
[00:49:00]
So people are oblivious that it's going on, I would just say maybe letting them know we are here, give us a call.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, if they attend an event, or go to a restaurant. Or have something catered at their own home, just that they can call us with excess food.
[00:49:17]
I had a friend the other day that was working on a photoshoot and they had a ton of leftover food. And she called us and I was so glad she did, because the people that were also working on the set. Were like, I'd love to have your card when we have excess food from these other events.
[00:49:33]
So just helping spread the word about what we're doing, agreed?
>> Speaker 1: Agreed, [LAUGH] nothing further to add. And lastly is there anything else I should have asked you or sweet memories you'd like to tell me? Or anything in general, gonna kinda open the floor for concluding thoughts from you.
[00:49:55]
>> Speaker 3: I think when we first started talking about this idea, we had no idea how quickly it would take off. Like the number of donors and recipients. And everybody we've met, especially in the nonprofit world, they have the biggest hearts. And I've just loved meeting everyone, we just have the best conversations.
[00:50:16]
And it really gives you a lot of hope for our community that there are so many people out there trying to do great things. So it's made me love Charlotte even more which has been a really, really cool part of what we're doing.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say I realized and I'm a news junkie, and sometimes I have to walk away because it makes my blood pressure rise.
[00:50:39]
Sometimes when we get so zoomed in and only hear what they're feeding us. You think the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But I've realized, actually getting out and talking to people and helping those and see in the love and passion. There's a lot of good in this world, you know?
[00:50:54]
So I've actually turned off the news a lot, because I would rather an encounter and meet these people. And see the good that is spreading, lots of people out there being the change they wanna see. But sometimes you don't hear their stories. So it's actually given me more positive vibes about my children future, about our future.
[00:51:12]
Where we're going, and how we get here. That's so exactly true, I feel like I was starting to get hopeless. Yes, for we did that I was getting in a bad mood after reading the news. And I also similarly have turned off the news a little bit more and like this is the thing to do.
[00:51:34]
Get out there and do something to make the world a better place as opposed to just reading all the bad things that are happening. [LAUGH] and getting angry about them from your own health [LAUGH] like I was. But yeah, I agree, I mean I get chills during these meetings with these amazing people.
[00:51:52]
The world is a great place, I feel so much hope now, yeah, just what they said.
>> Speaker 4: And you always hear, I mean you have just heard it a few years back. Is that instead of judging or being quick to descend on people, I realize we all have a story to tell, if we will only listen.
[00:52:08]
And I think once you hear and know other stories, it makes you love them so much deeper. So it's like Kim, and I'm very emotional, so I try to keep it in check. But sometimes you're talking to these, and hearing these stories and my eyes are welling up.
[00:52:22]
And I'm thinking be professional, be professional, but it's like it just gives you more hope, there is so much good.
>> Speaker 1: That's one thing I can say from this class and interviewing the people that I have, like Lucy Bush Carter. She, in her interview, tugging at my heartstrings.
[00:52:41]
She was saying we have more responsibility and it's our duty to feed these people. Because there's plenty of food and it's getting it to them, and you can't just watch your neighbor suffer. And so getting to know people like you guys, I agree with the news, it's very sad.
[00:52:59]
But it is reassuring to know that there's people like you guys out there.
>> Speaker 2: I have a good story about meeting Lucy Bush Carter, that I was wearing that T-shirt, that Food Connection T-shirt. And I was waiting for my daughter to get out of theatre class at ImaginOn, and I guess she was sitting behind me.
[00:53:17]
So I just heard somebody say Food Connection, what is that, can you tell me about it? So I walked over to her table and started telling her, she’s like, well, I’m kinda in that business too. And I was like, really, where do you work? And she said Friendship Trays, so we started chatting, exchanged cards.
[00:53:34]
And it was just so funny, it was just because I basically forgot to change.
>> Speaker 4: [LAUGH]
>> Speaker 2: We had to wear the T-shirt earlier in the day for something, and I would normally change, actually. But it was just meant to be, because it was seven o'clock at night and I was still wearing the T-shirt, and I was just, hi, [LAUGH].
[00:53:53]
It just was just a really cool meant to be kinda moment.
>> Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys so much for sitting down and talking to me, you guys have been such a pleasure.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you, I enjoyed that. Me, too.
>> Speaker 1: So much fun.
Friendship Trays - Lucy Bush Carter
Lucy Bush Carter is the Executive Director of Friendship Trays, a nonprofit organization located in SouthEnd Charlotte. Friendship Trays is the only non-governmental Charlotte-based organization creating and delivering healthy meals to elderly and infirm community members in their homes. Friendship Trays produces over 700 meals per day and operates with a volunteer base of over 1,300 volunteers. It takes 101 volunteers per day to deliver the meals throughout Charlotte. Lucy began volunteering with Friendship Trays in 1985, she was then hired as staff in the 1990s, and became Executive Director in the 2000s. In this interview, Ms. Bush provides an interesting perspective in regards to the mission of Friendship Trays, daily operations, the creation of Friendship Gardens, and food distribution throughout Mecklenburg County. She explains how Friendship Trays introduced the concept of Friendship Gardens in Charlotte, started the Urban Farm (now located at Garinger High School), the collection of produce they acquire and how Friendship Trays incorporates fresh produce into their meal program.
| Time | Subject |
| 0:00:07 | Introduction |
| 0:01:23 | History of Friendship Trays |
| 0:02:27 | Local churches that sponsored weekly lunches for elderly in Elizabeth |
| 0:02:56 | Original model of delivering meals |
| 0:03:47 | 1989 Friendship Trays makes decision to upfit kitchen at St. Martin’s to prepare meals themselves |
| 0:05:17 | Beginning of the collaboration between Friendship Trays and Friendship Gardens |
| 0:06:27 | Partnered with Slow Food Charlotte |
| 0:07:12 | Expanded the program to establish urban farm |
| 0:07:47 | Purpose of Friendship Gardens |
| 0:08:17 | Food used by Friendship Trays to produce meals, first farm at a nearby prison |
| 0:09:27 | Partnered with J. L. North to start seeds in greenhouse |
| 0:10:27 | Access to good, healthy food as a shared initiative |
| 0:11:59 | The Bulb, partner organization of mobile units for mobile farmers markets |
| 0:13:15 | Democratic National Convention model legacy programming |
| 0:14:32 | Volunteers working the Friendship Garden at Garinger High School plot |
| 0:15:27 | Types of produce received from the farm at Garinger |
| 0:16:38 | Growing season in Charlotte, amount of produce received |
| 0:17:43 | Faith organizations that bring mission groups to Friendship Trays |
| 0:18:22 | Salad Dressing Pilot program as a fundraiser |
| 0:19:29 | Front office staff ensuring Friendship Trays has enough volunteers |
| 0:20:47 | Friendship Trays providing more than just food but also peace of mind to families |
| 0:21:22 | Lucy tells the story of a long time volunteer delivering to a man who had fallen and broken his hip |
| 0:23:07 | More than just food - Talking about food volunteer |
| 0:23:22 | Service routes and food routes |
| 0:24:07 | Talks about her time as a volunteer and how she began by taking her two year old son with her |
| 0:24:53 | Established a weekend meal program through Presbyterian Hospital |
| 0:25:29 | Talks about the human interaction that the service provides |
| 0:25:56 | Talks about her time as a volunteer and the different types of clients served |
| 0:27:20 | A story of a client who lived in a garage apartment |
| 0:28:12 | Lucy expands on her personal relationship with clients and caring for them even after the meal service has ended |
| 0:29:22 | The challenges of working in a economically segregated city and diverse range of clientele, primary challenge is finances and funding |
| 0:30:22 | Declining government interest in taking care of people and reliance on nonprofit s |
| 0:31:12 | Revenue generating streams and need for new ideas |
| 0:32:03 | Fundraising for Friendship Trays and Friendship Gardens |
| 0:32:39 | Collaboration with existing nonprofits and corporations |
| 0:33:33 | Lucy explains the misconception between food capacity and food distribution |
| 0:33:55 | Problems with food distribution in Charlotte and compared to Atlanta |
| 0:34:24 | Income segregation and gentrification in neighborhoods Friendship Trays once served |
| 0:35:17 | Lucy thinks Charlotte is waking up to the major problems in the city |
| 0:36:47 | Mobile market concept and location of markets |
| 0:37:18 | Network of gardens in food deserts |
| 0:38:09 | Collaboration with Loaves and Fishes for clients in Renaissance West |
| 0:38:32 | Lucy explains that Friendship Trays would deliver pantry items from Loaves and Fishes Pantry |
| 0:39:19 | Satellite distribution model |
| 0:39:49 | Begins to wrap up interview |
| 0:40:07 | Lucy ends by talking about a moral responsibility to provide people with their basic needs |
| 0:42:03 | Responsibility as human beings to take care of each other |
| 0:42:30 | Talks about members on staff |
| 0:42:44 | Conclusion of Interview/Thanks |
[00:00:07]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Years ago, I've had a-
>> Rachel McManimen: Okay, so today is Wednesday, March the 6th, 2019 at 10:41 AM. My name is Rachel McManimen, and I'm interviewing Lucy Bush Carter, who is the Executive Director of Friendship Trays. Friendship Trays is a non-profit organization whose mission is to deliver nutritious meals to elderly or infirm individuals in the Charlotte community who are unable to obtain or prepare their own meals.
[00:00:34]
While also providing human connection to the isolated and lonely, and peace of mind to their families. Friendship Trays is the only non-governmental Charlotte-based organization creating and delivering healthy meals to elderly and infirm community members in your homes. We are currently interviewing at the Distribution Street Kitchen located in South End Charlotte.
[00:00:52]
In today's interview we will be discussing the network of Friendship Trays. Primary themes of our interview will include Friendship Trays, community gardens, the relationship with Friendship Gardens, and then food distribution in the Charlotte area. [LAUGH] Mouthful. So I know in our tour you gave us a little background story, but I was wondering if you could explain a little bit more about the history of Friendship Trays.
[00:01:16]
I mean, you said it got started in 1976, so it's been a long history of non-profits in this area.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: So in the mid-70s there were a number of well established non-profits that were created at the same time, within a year or two of each other, by strong women in this community.
[00:01:38]
Crisis Assistance Ministry was created, Friendship Trays was created, Community Food Rescue was created, and Loaves and Fishes, all within a year or two of each other. Responding to a community need. So Friendship Trays started in the Elizabeth neighborhood. It was an offshoot of a weekly luncheon that the Elizabeth Service committee, or I don't know if that's exactly the right name.
[00:02:13]
But there was a consortium of churches comprised of St Martins Episcopal, St John's Baptist,
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Hawthorne Lane United Methodist, and Caldwell Presbyterian, that sponsored weekly luncheons that took place at St. Martin's for elderly in the neighborhood. Cuz at that time, Elizabeth was a neighborhood filled with a lot of older people.
[00:02:41]
Some of the people became infirmed and unable to get to the luncheons. So they did a survey in the neighborhood and determined that they would like to receive meals in their home. So the original model was to purchase meals from the hospital, which was in the neighborhood. Both Presbyterian and Mercy Hospital are in the Elizabeth neighborhood, and they began purchasing diet-specific meals from the hospitals and delivering them.
[00:03:09]
So I believe they started with five individuals out of the basement of Caldwell Presbyterian and grew from there. So we stayed in St. Martin's. The offices were established at St. Martin's, they delivered originally from Caldwell but the whole operation was centered at St. Martin's pretty quickly. And continued the practice of purchasing that specific meals from hospitals and nursing homes as we expanded beyond Elizabeth.
[00:03:42]
But then in 1989, we made the decision to up fit the kitchen at St. Martin's so that we could prepare our own meals. We did a capital campaign, and raised that money, and partnered with St. Martin's to utilize their kitchen for the delivery of meals. So we did that until we maxed out.
[00:04:07]
We used the kitchen at Saint Martin's until we maxed out at 400 meals. And at that time, Bruce Parker was on the board and knew that we were looking for space to create a kitchen, and said I have a warehouse space in this area of Charlotte that is in a pretty rough area.
[00:04:26]
And the board struggled with whether it was safe for volunteers to come here. But now fast forward to 2019 and we are in the midst of one of the hottest developing areas in the South East. It's really amazing what has changed and what has happened in this area over the years.
[00:04:51]
So we laugh about the board being worried about searching for volunteers because we're kind of in the lively, active, all the time part of Charlotte where young people are gathering, and riding scooters and [INAUDIBLE].
>> Rachel McManimen: [LAUGH] So how did the collaboration between Friendship Garden and Friendship Trays begin?
[00:05:18]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Well, another staff person and I went to Atlanta to a conference, and at the conference we became aware of a program in either rural Kentucky or Tennessee. I don't remember which, but basically they were utilizing a garden to provide fresh produce for people that lived in poverty that came to these centers for services.
[00:05:48]
And they would be able to give them fresh vegetables to take home. And the other employee looked at me and said, we could do that. So we came home, she was already an avid backyard gardener. We came home and we told Bruce we would like to have a garden, and he said you can put it here.
[00:06:09]
So behind the building next door that he at that time was leasing was just a vacant area that was not being used for anything. And we partnered with Slow Food Charlotte, who had a lot of passionate people about local food and a lot of gardeners, and we created a demonstration garden down there.
[00:06:38]
We made raised beds out of pallets. And we grew an amazing amount of tomatoes, and okra, and squash, and eggplant, and peppers, and all sorts of things in that little demonstration garden for a number of years. We wanted to expand on that concept, so we applied for funding from both Wells Fargo and the Women's Impact Fund, and got funding to expand the program to include an urban farm.
[00:07:17]
So we established an urban farm and and we called it Friendship Gardens.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We toyed with whether it would be gardens, farm, what would be the name, but we just kind of settled on Friendship Gardens. And it is not a separate program, it's not a separate 501C3, it is an integral arm of Friendship Trays.
[00:07:44]
And part of their purpose in addition to teaching healthy growing practices is to provide food to come into the meals here. So that we can elevate the quality of the food and and use as much local as we can that's attainable and affordable. We serve an at-risk population of people, so we have to serve them good quality food.
[00:08:12]
So most of our food that we utilize and the products we utilize are purchased from a wholesaler. But we infuse the meals as we can with local produce that comes in through this network of gardens and from the urban farm that is now at Garinger High School. The first farm we had was at a prison.
[00:08:33]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: The warden actually approached us and said, we really don't need a baseball field, but it'd be great to have a garden. So we used some of the funding from one of the sources that we had established. We had a staff person, a part-time staff person that oversaw it all.
[00:08:52]
But we plowed the field and created a little urban farm there at the prison. And several of the prisoners, as their work portion of their confinement, worked in the garden with Henry, who was the program director. And so when his family came to visit on the weekends, he would give them fresh produce that he had grown.
[00:09:20]
Cuz in addition to what they grew for us, they could have their own plots that they could grow some of what they wanted to. We also partnered with Jail North to start seeds in their greenhouse. And so the inmates there would start seeds, deliver them here, and then people in the garden network could come here and pick up the seedlings to plant in their gardens.
[00:09:47]
We started with a handful of gardens, and now there are over 100 that are in the network. Not all those bring things here, but a lot of them do. And it's just been a remarkable partnership and way for people to get involved in something that they're passionate about.
[00:10:07]
It brings a different volunteer kind of profile to us. The garden part versus the meal delivery part and the prep part. But it's all tied together, and we like to, as we frequently talk about, we want more people to have access to good healthy food. And that's an initiative that crosses programmatically among the non-profits in Charlotte that deal with hunger and feeding people, is make access to healthy food more readily available.
[00:10:49]
So that's kind of the common ground that both Friendship Trays and Friendship Gardens gets its sort of focus around.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: And I really am pretty sure that our food system is quite in need of evaluation and reorganization. And we wanna do the part that we can do, because we're serving people who are homebound, they have chronic illness, they may be recovering from surgery, they may have cancer, they may have other diseases that good nutrition and healthy eating can make a tremendous difference.
[00:11:42]
And we want to be that vehicle that brings that opportunity to eat in a healthy way to them, so.
>> Rachel McManimen: Right, and now, are you guys partnered with any other organizations that do that as well?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Well, we've partnered, there's an organization that you may have run across called The Bulb.
[00:12:01]
>> Rachel McManimen: Yeah, we saw that just when we were researching Friendship Gardens, it had Friendship Trays and The Bulbs.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right, so Alisha Pruett is the young lady behind The Bulb, and her goal is to develop out a network of mobile units from mobile farmers markets.
>> Rachel McManimen: That's cool.
[00:12:28]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: So she actually is currently doing the mobile market for us at the transit center. We try to get as much donated food to her from the garden and from other sources, to help her have the things to offer. But she does that market, she does the Rosa Parks market that's out on the Beatties Ford Corridor for us.
[00:12:58]
And then she does some others that I don't know where they are, but those are the two that we have the agreements for the markets with. Another thing in the development of Friendship Gardens was that in 2010 the Democratic National Convention was here. And the model that they chose for the convention was that it was not gonna be something that just came and happened and was gone.
[00:13:30]
That they wanted some legacy programming to be attached with that. So we got funding, the local committee helped us get funding from Humana to do the mobile market and to partner with some build-outs of gardens. So we did that, and that's what gave us the seed money to start the mobile market at the transit center.
[00:14:01]
And we have just maintained that over the years. So from our perspective the legacy has continued, cuz we still have that mobile market.
>> Rachel McManimen: For sure. Now, I wanna go back to ask a specific question about Friendship Gardens, because you said, here in the distribution kitchen it's largely driven by volunteers and also out in the field delivering meals.
[00:14:21]
Is the Friendship Garden also primarily volunteers who work the Friendship Garden? I know you mentioned the program director, but outside of him, is that something that volunteers you rely very heavily on?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We do utilize volunteers during the growing season. It's at Garinger. Depending on how the horticulture program is going and run, some of the students get involved with our plot at Garinger.
[00:14:51]
There is a farm manager, a part-time farm manager, and he does the planning, and maintains the crops, and organizes the volunteers. So again, like Wells Fargo, we'll send a crew here, Wells Fargo sends a crew there. People that have a passion about gardening like to volunteer there, so it does rely heavily on volunteers.
[00:15:18]
>> Rachel McManimen: Right, and what types of produce do you receive from the Friendship Garden?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: From the farm at Garinger?
>> Rachel McManimen: Yes, yes.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We get sweet potatoes. We get butternut squash. A lot of herbs, garlic.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: I believe they grew some onions last year. They try to come and talk to the kitchen staff, and ask them what is most helpful.
[00:15:48]
And they also try to plant things that have a long shelf life, like the sweet potatoes and the butternut squash. They don't do tomatoes anymore. They did. There was a really rough year with tomatoes, there were a lot of issues, everybody had issues with tomatoes. And-
>> Rachel McManimen: Yeah.
[00:16:07]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: And we just thought we'll just stick with some of the things that just have a longer shelf life, cuz that works better for us. I mean, they'll bring us sweet potatoes and we have sweet potatoes curing, we have a warehouse across the street and we have sweet potatoes curing over there for months.
[00:16:26]
>> Rachel McManimen: Wow, and how much produce you receive from the garden at Geringer and do you receive it all year long or is it kind of depending on the harvest and what time of year that you receive it?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We're really fortunate in Charlotte that the growing season is very long.
[00:16:43]
So this is about the only time there's really not anything coming in from over there. We brought in about 11,000 pounds in 2018, so-
>> Rachel McManimen: It's a lot of produce. [LAUGH]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: That's a lot of produce. And like I said, we have this salad dressing pilot project going on.
[00:17:10]
And they grew a lot of oregano, parsley,
>> Lucy Bush Carter: I believe it was just oregano and parsley. Maybe thyme, I'm not sure, and garlic.
>> Rachel McManimen: Garlic.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: And the processing of all of that was very labor intensive. It was fortunate that we did have a good, strong crew of volunteers in and out of here in the summer to help do that.
[00:17:38]
We partnered with some faith organizations that bring mission groups here in the summer time. There's a program called Cross Mission that Maris Park Presbyterian manages. And volunteers will come from more rural areas throughout the South to Charlotte, stay at Maris Park, and then they send them out to the community to do volunteer work.
[00:18:04]
And they have volunteers here for a portion of the summer, three days a week. And so that was a great resource for processing those herbs that needed to be grown and processed for the salad dressing.
>> Rachel McManimen: And is that pilot program still continuing or?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: It's over.
>> Rachel McManimen: It's over.
[00:18:27]
Did it not work out how you thought it would?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: It was a great pilot, we learned a lot, it was delicious salad dressing, and they taste tested it with children in schools. The idea was that a school would sell the dressing instead of selling wrapping paper. That they would be involved with the growing of the herbs and the production of the salad dressing, and then that would be the PTA sales project.
[00:19:08]
That takes a lot of organizing, and marketing, and storytelling, and developing, and we just aren't equipped, staff-wise, as you can see. You see what our staff does, and the front office staff is making sure we have enough volunteers to deliver the meals, and making that efficient for the volunteers so that they'll come back again.
[00:19:38]
Cuz we tell people you can do this on your lunch hour. And it's a great way to volunteer for busy people that don't really have a whole lot of time, they can usually carve out a lunch hour once a month to deliver meals. And we have volunteers that come once a week, we have volunteers that come once a month, twice a month, that come as needed, we call them if we need substitutes, and they can say yes and they can say no.
[00:20:04]
But our volunteer coordinators are totally focused on making that a meaningful, efficient experience for the volunteer. Cuz we want them to come here, get the meals, and then spend their time interacting with the people they're delivering the meals to. Because they are isolated and they don't see people, and as you said in your opening remarks, we provide peace of mind for families.
[00:20:31]
Because they know that they can work more focused at their job because someone is going to check on their grandmother, or their aunt, or their mum at lunch time. And we're gonna let them know if they find something that's wrong. And we have found people that have fallen, we've found a woman who had fallen at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning on the way to the bathroom and laid on the floor till the volunteer came.
[00:20:55]
She knew somebody was coming but she had to wait until they got there. And another story that I was involved in was of a longtime volunteer, one of the original volunteers back from St Martin's in the mid 70s still was volunteering. This was probably maybe 15 years ago now, but she went to deliver her route and she called and she said I'm pretty sure Mr. Jones is on the dining room floor.
[00:21:27]
I'm talking to him but he can't get to the door, and I think he's fallen off, I think he's on the dining room floor now. So we'll call 911, and if you wait until they get there and I can get there, we'll go from there. So I pulled his emergency contact, his emergency contact was his niece, and she lived in Morrisville.
[00:21:50]
And the volunteer stayed there, when I got there, the firemen were there, the medics were there, and the police were there. They had broken in the house, and he was on the dining room floor, and he was arguing with them because he wanted to wait until his niece got there before they took him anywhere.
[00:22:06]
And they said, Mr Smith, we're pretty sure you have broken your hip. And he said well, I need a weight for my niece. Well, I walked in, and I looked down at him, and I said, I'm Lucy, I'm from Friendship Grace. Now, he didn't know me. I said I will call your niece and talk to her, and make sure she knows where you are.
[00:22:29]
And let's let these nice gentlemen go ahead and take you to the hospital, and he said, okay. So off they went, he had broken his hip. He was 98, living at home alone. He was 98, he'd broken his hip, had his hip repaired. Another volunteer that delivered to him regularly baked him a birthday cake cuz he had his birthday while he was in the hospital, and she took him a birthday cake.
[00:22:56]
He recuperated, went to rehab, came back home, and we continued to serve him for another year or so before he wasn't able to stay at home alone, but that's the kind of thing that happens. And the volunteers get very connected to the people that they're serving.
>> Rachel McManimen: And we saw your big service map outside your office, with multiple different routes.
[00:23:20]
Now your regular volunteers, do they stay? Do they drive the same routes?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Most of them do.
>> Rachel McManimen: They do.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Now, the substitutes go wherever we need for them to go, but there are a lot of people who have their own route. When I started as a volunteer when my son was two I was looking for a volunteer activity I could do with him.
[00:23:39]
And we had a route in Dilworth, and we delivered to the same people every week. And we had an older gentleman who was 99, and he didn't have any family, and he looked so forward to my two year old and I coming to visit, and we got to be really good friends with him.
[00:24:06]
And on Monday For years we delivered on Fridays, but we switched, then delivered on Mondays. And I would go on Monday and he wouldn't come to the door and I twice had to have the police come and break in. What happened to him was he stayed in bed all weekend, we didn't deliver on Saturdays and Sundays.
[00:24:27]
And he didn't get out of bed, and by Monday he was dehydrated and confused and it was our call and attention to it that kept him alive.
>> Rachel McManimen: Right.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Really and truly. And we helped with that, that was one of the stories that they used to establish a weekend meal program that Presbyterian Hospital did.
[00:24:54]
And when volunteers went on Saturdays and Sundays, he was fine on Mondays, but that happened two Mondays that we had to take him to the hospital because he was not in good shape because he was so dehydrated.
>> Rachel McManimen: That's so sad. That just shows the need for, I mean that establishes we do need someone on the weekends, or some type of capacity because people do need that both interaction and the nutrients from the food.
[00:25:20]
Right.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Sometimes I think the nutrients from the brief interaction are more important than the food. I know they are. I've seen it and you hear it when people call. There's one man that calls every day and the reason he calls is to talk to somebody.
>> Rachel McManimen: So when the volunteers go and they drop off the meals, do they typically go in and sit and chat, or what are those interactions?
[00:25:48]
You were a volunteer, so can you tell me a little bit about your experiences dropping off meals and chatting with the clients?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Well, there are as many different examples as there are people.
>> Rachel McManimen: [LAUGH]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: There was one woman on my route who we would pull her meal out and make her last because she was going to talk for a long time And this is when we were doing hot meals.
[00:26:17]
That two-year old is 35.
>> Rachel McManimen: [LAUGH]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: But we would have to restructure the route so that Mrs. Ballard was last so we could visit with her because she would not let you leave until she was done. Yeah, she was bed ridden and she was lonely and she wanted to talk and she was delightful.
[00:26:40]
It was fun to talk to her. And then you have other people that take the meal, say thank you or leave a cooler out, sometimes that's out of necessity. We served people that are on dialysis, and so frequently they will be at dialysis when we come to deliver.
[00:27:00]
But fortunately the meal was waiting for them when they come home, and they can have their lunch. But there are some people that wanna visit and there are some people that just wanna say thank you and take the meal. We had another woman who lived in a garage apartment that was very reclusive, but she was so fascinating, she had grown up in downtown Charlotte.
[00:27:29]
Near the Baptist church, near the first Baptist church which wasn't where it is now, I don't believe, I think it was closer to downtown. And she tells stories about when she was a child, walking to church and she was so fascination and so entertaining, which they eventually moved her to a nursing home.
[00:27:55]
And we visited her in the nursing home after she wasn't even on the program anymore. And the gentleman that we found on Monday, I actually took him to Aldersgate. And his caregiver, by this time he was 98 or 99 and his wife had died, they didn't have any children and this was his wife's best friend that was his caregiver, and she was kind of skeptical of me.
[00:28:26]
She didn't understand what, she thought there was something I wanted, which I just wanted him to be safe, but she got me, he didn't want to go anywhere. And she got me to take him. And she didn't tell him that he wasn't coming back home. And I did it because that's what she needed.
[00:28:51]
But he didn't live very long after that. He didn't want to be there, he wanted to be home.
>> Rachel McManimen: So I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and ask, what are some of the benefits, I think the relationships, definitely a large benefit. But also the challenges of working with community gardens or meal services like this.
[00:29:14]
Especially in the Charlotte area and it seems like, just the way the city is segregated and the common food deserts. And the clientele that you certainly, he said there's such a need in Charlotte. What are some of the challenges that you face in your experiences?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Well, the primary challenge is money.
[00:29:35]
We spend between $400,000 and $500,000 a year with the food wholesaler. And that's on the food. The containers that we send them in, the price of those containers goes up every year astronomically. So everyday between $500 and $600 of what we spend on the meal in a day is for the containers.
[00:29:59]
They are 22 and 23 cents a piece. So you've got .50 cents in containers in every meal.
>> Rachel McManimen: Mm-hm.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: So the funding is challenging. And that's challenging for nonprofits, period, whether it's ones that serve food or whatever it is they're doing. Funding is challenging. As government becomes less and less interested in being involved and thinking care of people is their responsibility, they're reyling more and more on the faith community and on nonprofits.
[00:30:36]
And there is no way we can pick up the slack that, that leaves. There is no way, because every time some government funding happens, even if a different mindset comes in there and they want to focus on services, they don't ever restore what they took away. And then it's my belief that nonprofits have got to figure out, and whether it's friendship trays or trying to find the fundings for friendship gadrens.
[00:31:10]
We have to figure out revenue generating streams. Like the salad dressing, to bring in revenue that we're not putting our hands out and saying, just give me. What can I sell that is not mission creep.
>> Rachel McManimen: Mm-hm.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: So for instance, we lease the kitchen during down times for food trucks and small food purveyors.
[00:31:34]
And they pay us an hourly rate, and they pay us for shelving and dry storage. So that's one of the ways we try to generate revenue. And the daycares, serving the daycares. Although those are subsidized because they again are serving low income people, they still contribute to an income stream for us that helps tremendously.
[00:31:56]
And one of the realities for us is last year we did have the best fund raising year we ever had. And that's Friendship Tries and Friendship Garden combined, cuz we don't. They're restricted gifts that come to both. But when I say we raised over a million dollars in funding that's both of us together.
[00:32:20]
It was the best year we ever had, and we still were short and did not finish the year in the black. And that's not sustainable over time, so I believe that collaborations with other non-profits, and with corporations, with the business sector-
>> Rachel McManimen: Yeah.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Are answers and solutions.
[00:32:51]
What can you do to help us, but what can we provide for you so it's not just one sided, that you're giving to us? We want it to be something that is mutually beneficial for your employees.
>> Rachel McManimen: And that's kind of the distribution and financial resources challenge on the left side-
[00:33:14]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Yes.
>> Rachel McManimen: And not necessarily the food capacity?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right.
>> Rachel McManimen: A lot of food here-
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right.
>> Rachel McManimen: Food is donated. And like the loaves of bread that you showed, tons of them.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right, more than we can use.
>> Rachel McManimen: Yeah, it's good thing you got that freeze then.
[00:33:27]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: [LAUGH] It is a distribution challenge. World wide it's a distribution challenge. There's enough food to feed people in the world and it's so dysfunctional that there are hungry people. And there are.
>> Rachel McManimen: Mm-hm.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: But it's not because there's not food to provide for them, it's that we don't have the distribution and will power and desire to do it.
[00:33:54]
>> Rachel McManimen: Do you think Charlotte has a unique distribution issue, as compared to the Atlanta operation that you saw or just-
>> Lucy Bush Carter: I think the segregated nature of how,
>> Lucy Bush Carter: The systems have operated for years with intentionality to keep income segregation at play. And all of the gentrification that is going on, and the redevelopment in neighborhoods that we once served older low-income people on fixed, living on social security and disability.
[00:34:48]
Those people are gone and have been replaced by either renovated or torn down and rebuilt houses for people with names. And then we have not done, we have not done a good, and we know that, we're 50th out of 15 in upward mobility capacity. And our system has kept us that way.
[00:35:14]
I think we're, our eyes are being open to that, whether we will respond is the next phase of Charlotte.
>> Rachel McManimen: Could you tell us a little bit more about the transient drop off system that you were explaining out there? Because I think that offers a unique perspective on how we're getting to food to people that can't walk to Publix, or Harris Teeter and things like that.
[00:35:37]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right.
>> Rachel McManimen: And kind of live in these outside areas of this readily available access to nutritious food.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Right, well the food desert issue is because grocery stores don't go into low income neighborhoods because they can't survive. There's not much mark-up on food.
>> Rachel McManimen: Mm-hm.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: It's the other things that a grocery store sells that keep them going, the cosmetics, the, you know things-
[00:36:06]
>> Rachel McManimen: Toiletries.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Toiletries. The other than food items that there's the mark-up on and the way they make their money, there's not much mark-up on the food. So, trying to level the playing field so that the people that even live in those areas, that don't have the grocery stores, there's been some efforts to try the effect of small mom and pop type markets that are in those areas.
[00:36:39]
I really don't know a lot about that, I just know there's been conversation. And part of the mobile market concept is if there is a Family Dollar that does sell a lot of highly processed foods I mean least they're selling food. But could you locate a mobile market near there to enable the people that can get there to also have access to fresh produce?
[00:37:06]
That would be a way to go about that.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: And the other thing is the network of gardens has a possibility to connect people with, here's this community garden in your neighborhood, you can have a plot, you can grow.
>> Rachel McManimen: Right.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: So there needs to be a coordinated effort among different non-profits and groups, a collaborative model to have those touch points work more logically and efficiently.
[00:37:51]
For instance, we are in conversation with Loaves & Fishes to,
>> Lucy Bush Carter: To create a system by which their clients who live in Renaissance West, which is out off of West Boulevard, can get pantry food items delivered to them. There's a pantry that is relatively close in distance to Renaissance West, but they can't walk there, there is a highway in between.
[00:38:32]
And it's not feasible for them to be able to walk there, let alone come home with a weeks worth, or however with the groceries. So what we're talking about is developing a system where the client, the Loaves & Fishes client can call or go online and place an order.
[00:38:55]
And then we would have one of our volunteers pick up the order from the pantry, and deliver it to the client because we're going into Renaissance West to deliver meals anyway. And so, we're working on that right now. We use the satellite distribution model, so that we're getting the meals for a neighborhood in Matthews closer for both the volunteer and the people to safely get that meal delivered to them.
[00:39:35]
But we need to work on more out of the box way and ideas to improve that system.
>> Rachel McManimen: Well, we're coming up on our time limit, and I know you are a very busy woman. [LAUGH] But I just wanna ask you if there's anything else that I didn't mention that you would like to talk about, or any stories you would like to tell us or anything in general?
[00:40:05]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Just that I think we have a moral responsibility to provide people with their basic needs. We need to feed them, we need to make sure they've got a decent roof over their head, and have a means of sustaining themselves, whatever that is, a job. And I think Charlotte has a tendency of be sort of siloed in its approach to things.
[00:40:42]
And I know that our efforts with Friendship Gardens and with our partnership with Loaves & Fishes, and the Bulb, and the other things that we're all partner together with, we're trying to do more to solve more of the problems. And I think other non-profits have to think along those same lines we don't need any more non-profits.
[00:41:11]
We need the ones we have to figure out how they can combine energy and forces with others and meet the need and not come up with anymore, any new programming. Cuz, I've been around long enough that I have seen so many trends come and go. We'll start talking about a problem and I'm like yeah, 25 years ago we had this project that was supposed to solve that problem.
[00:41:49]
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We just need to figure all that out, and figure out how to take care of people that can't take care of themselves, it's our responsibility.
>> Rachel McManimen: Mm-hm.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: It's our responsibility as people to take care of each other, and I just think we need to work hard to figure that out.
[00:42:09]
And then Charlotte might one day be a world class city if we figure that out. We're not now, and we're fooling ourselves if we think we are cuz there's too many people that don't have what they need.
>> Rachel McManimen: Some great concluding thoughts.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: [LAUGH]
>> Rachel McManimen: It was a pleasure speaking with you.
[00:42:24]
Thank you so much for taking the time to give us a tour-
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Sure.
>> Rachel McManimen: And speaking with us.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Glad to.
>> Rachel McManimen: Can I just ask two clarifying questions?
>> Lucy Bush Carter: Mm-hm.
>> Rachel McManimen: Friendship, how many members you have on staff.
>> Lucy Bush Carter: We have 10 full-time and about 11 part-time staff members