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A Giant Panda

Ballpoint Pen on Bristol Board, 2018

By Kaila Braley

Editor-in-Chief

In the FSU dining hall, above the conveyor belt that conveniently removes unwanted, half-eaten food from the view of diners, posters display the pounds of food being thrown away each day.

The weights on the poster range from 100 pounds to over 300.

Down the road, less than two miles from campus, families live in temporary housing arrangements, including the Pathways and Pearl Street shelters, which assist homeless families and largely rely on donations for provide food and supplies to these families.

A graduate student studying nutrition, Meghan Skeehan, saw this disparity and wanted to do something about it.

While surfing the web, Skeehan found an organization called the Food Recovery Network, which is a national organization founded at the University of Maryland by students who noticed the amount of food being thrown out at college dining halls and sports events. They began to recover the extra food that would have been thrown out and bring it to kitchens and shelters which help feed those in the community dealing with food insecurity.  

Skeehan decided to start a chapter at Framingham State the fall semester of 2013. “They [representatives from the Food Recovery Network] really help you through the whole thing. It’s pretty simple,” she said.

Ralph Eddy, director of Dining Services, was thrilled to be brought this idea and was happy to work with Skeehan to make this program run smoothly.

He added, “I think it [volunteer work] says something about the quality of students we have here.”

The first recovery from Framingham State occurred a semester later, last spring semester, when Skeehan began bringing food to local shelters once a week. She picked up the food, always frozen and often soup, from the Dining Commons, where workers had prepared the food in aluminum trays and set it aside. She would load the food into her car, mark down the weight, type of food and the volunteers participating with her in order to report back to her contact at the Food Recovery Network.

For the first semester or so, she was the only volunteer. Now, there are about 15 students who signed up for emails after nutrition department faculty asked around, and Tori Dost, the service intern at SILD, sent an email to students who might be interested in volunteering.

Dost helped Skeehan with “the logistical side” of the program, meaning helping her get a meeting room and recruit students who might be interested in participating in the program.

Dost said the program is “incredibly important” because she believes “universities have a responsibility to their community because we do have so many resources - not just financial resources, but just manpower. We have so many students who just benefit from service.

“And in terms of the Food Recovery Network, we have so much food that’s just going to waste.”

Skeehan considered trying to make FSU’s chapter of the Food Recovery Network into an official club in order to get more volunteers, but she felt going through the process wasn’t worth the results.

“The main head organization kind of funds you. They have grants available. So really, the only thing I would need sponsorship for would be to hold meetings, and I didn’t want to go through the whole process,” she said.  

This semester, Skeehan said about five or six students often come on recoveries with her, including senior Jenny Wang.  

“The reaction from people is the greatest part,” Wang said, adding that the experience has “opened my eyes” to the number of people in Framingham who struggle with poverty.

When no one else is able to go, Skeehan will deliver the food on her own. On one Monday in late March, Skeehan was the only student able to go on the recovery. She packed five large rectangular trays of soup onto a tall metal cart - a small number of trays compared to what she was able to bring the previous weeks.

On the way to her car, which she temporarily parked behind the McCarthy Center, a wheel fell off of the cart. Skeehan didn’t miss a beat, and supported the cart more firmly as she brought the trays of soup to her car.

Before she could bring the food anywhere, Skeehan had to call ahead to make sure the locations she was driving to would be interested in taking a few trays. She typically starts with the Pathways shelter, which is located less than ten minutes from campus and temporarily houses 14 families that are homeless to help them find jobs and safe places to stay more permanently.

The Director of Pathways in Framingham Kimberley Hicks said the shelter usually receives donated food that isn’t precooked, because many of the families prefer to cook for themselves. She added that about four to six families don’t have any income, so precooked donations such as soup are really helpful.

Skeehan asks how many trays of food the shelter is able to take this particular week, and brings in two trays of soup right to the kitchen. There are a few people in the nearby rooms, but there is little interaction between Skeehan and the people who stay at the shelter.

She gets back into her car and calls the next location - the Pearl Street Shelter, which is unaffiliated with the Pearl Street Cupboard and Café, although they both happen to be located on the same street.

Jillisa Lejeune, a case manager at the Pearl Street Shelter, said any donation greatly benefits the 12 families who live there. The shelter is required to provide food for the families if they can’t afford it themselves, so food donations greatly help the shelter’s budget.

Skeehan said, however, that she often doesn’t feel as if what she’s doing is enough. Less than an hour after leaving campus with five trays of soup, she is done with her delivery until the next Monday, when more food will be packaged and ready to be delivered.

Skeehan would really like to find a way to work more in depth with community members and create more of a relationship with the families and the workers at the shelters.

She also hopes the Framingham State chapter of the Food Recovery Network can grow so that food is recovered from more places in Framingham, such as restaurants.

Perhaps more importantly, though, she hopes more students will get involved in the program.

Kara Donahue, a senior who participates in recoveries in the Framingham State chapter, said almost everyone who participates in the program will be graduating at the end of this year, and she hopes more students will join to keep the initiative running.

By Kaila Braley

Editor-in-Chief

Dressed in a grey sweatshirt and a Patriot’s hat, Joseph Mina slapped the side of a massive stainless steel industrial fridge filled to the brim with boxes of frozen food.

“That’s Besty,” he said with a smile so quick it almost slipped by unnoticed.

It’s one of many industrial fridges in the building, which, besides a large dining room, also has rooms lined with bins and shelves stocked with bread, potatoes, canned goods and various other foods. Some of this food has been donated by FSU’s Dining Services, and some of the volunteers are FSU community members.

Mina, director of the Pearl Street Cupboard & Café, a food pantry and café in Framingham, is a large man who speaks quickly and with a matter-of-factness that suggests he has often dealt with difficult situations but hasn’t had the time to slow down for much.

He ran the café and pantry on his own with the help of various volunteers, who he called the “lifeblood” of the organization, for the four years the Pearl Street location has been open - until recently when a receptionist, a couple of drivers and an assistant were hired.

“What makes our location unique is that many United Ways are more like middle men,” he said.

Mina explained that many other locations get funding from campaigns run by organizations or businesses in the community, and they deliver food and supplies to other pantries or kitchens that prove the donations are being used for the community members. There was a need for a “direct service” café, Mina said - a need which, in part, Pearl Street fills.

“With the Greater Boston Food Pantry, we found there was a gap, with people not being taken care of in terms of food security. So as a result, we opened three different pantries,” Mina said, including the Pearl Street Café in Framingham.

This location not only offers a pantry from which eligible patrons are able to take away a week’s worth of food, based on the number of people registered for that household, but there is also a restaurant style café where visitors are served a three-course meal.

Mina recalled a moment when a young boy, who came into the café regularly with his father, hugged Mina’s legs, saying the café was the best restaurant around.

Moments like that are very rewarding, said Mina, who used to be a high school teacher before running the café. He added when he was a teacher, he often wouldn’t know what impact he had on his students until years later. At the Pearl Street Cupboard & Café, he saw the impact his work had on people immediately.

“You see a little kid with an apple, happy to get some food. … You have good things happening every day,” he said.

Working in nonprofits runs in his blood, he said, referencing his father, who encouraged him and his sister to volunteer growing up. He gestured to the silver-framed picture of his newborn son on his desk and said he hopes the family tradition continues.

Mina had been laid off from his teaching job, which provided him opportunity to get the Pearl Street location up and running - a job that he only meant to take for a year. He has now been at this location for four years because he enjoys the work.

The biggest challenge, Mina said, is keeping up with the demand. In Framingham, 3,600 families access the café and pantry a year - about 150 to 200 families a week

“That’s a lot of people to take care of,” he said.

When a family comes into the pantry, they are served as customers are in a restaurant. They are seated at tables in the dining room, waited on and presented with a freshly cooked three-course meal.

Volunteer of more than three years and receptionist Sandy Dennis said the food served is “often very good. The gentleman who’s cooking ran a restaurant.”

She recounted that the night before, the visitors had been served rolls with butter, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn and apple pie for dessert. “What more could you ask for?” she asked.

Dennis recalled a man who came to the pantry who was living in one room with his sister and her child. Because they were not supposed to be living in his room, the man was unable to get a referral for all three of them to get assistance through the pantry.

He also did not have kitchen facilities to cook the food, so he wouldn’t take food from the pantry that he needed to cook, like pasta. “He had no water to boil or a pot to boil it in,” Dennis said.

He would ask for soup and canned foods that he could eat cold.

Dennis began volunteering after she retired. She said the people who come into the pantry often don’t take more food than they can eat, and insist that they give anything they won’t use back so someone else can have it.

With fierce admiration, she spoke about a woman, whom she guessed to be about 65 or 70 years old and who was taking care of her grandchildren - one an infant and the other about 3 years old. She came into the pantry regularly to help feed the children.

“That’s hard,” Dennis said.

Dennis added she often felt like she wanted to help the customers more than she already was. “There are moments I would like to give them a house,” she said. “But I can’t do that.”

Out of her own pocket, she buys toiletries such as paper towels and deodorant, for the customers, who would otherwise only be provided with food items.

Mina said as far as volunteers and donations go, “I don’t say no to much.”

Some of that help comes right from Framingham State University.

One nutrition class at Framingham State requires students to volunteer at the pantry for class credit. “The kids come in, ask questions. And it helps make them more aware of the situation in Framingham. A lot of people don’t think Framingham has a problem,” Mina said.

Food and nutrition department chair Janet Schwartz said it’s a requirement of the Community Nutrition class to volunteer at a food pantry for three hours and write a reflection about it. While students can choose to volunteer at a pantry in their hometown, many spend those three hours at the Pearl Street Cupboard and Café.

“Most students are fearful before volunteering, but after, they are amazed at the other volunteers and how appreciative guests are,” Schwartz said.  

She added, “We are usually fearful of the unknown - that is human nature. These experiences require students to interact and provide a service to this ‘invisible’ population.”

Mina said there is a stigma that all of their patrons are homeless. In fact, elderly, families, veterans, people with disabilities and other individuals who are underemployed or unemployed make up the majority of those who come to the café and pantry. He said many people are reluctant to come to the pantry for help, and “99.9 percent” of them legitimately need the assistance.

Not many college students from FSU seem to come for food, likely, Mina said, because they don’t think of it or don’t know they would qualify for help.

The yearly income for an individual to qualify for assistance is $21,590.

Sodexo also donates large quantities of food and thousands of dollars worth of supplies to the Pearl Street Cupboard & Café, Mina said. The Sodexo Corporation has donated about 7,000 pounds of extra food since the café opened.