Spices and sponges
Training program helps volunteers understand what food pantry clients need
Three hundred clients of the Corner Market Food Pantry run by Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Northern New Jersey got an unusual bonus recently, thanks to Tracy Schwartz of Saddle Brook, the associate director of Women’s Philanthropy at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.
Ms. Schwartz was one of a dozen professionals from Jewish federations across the country handpicked to participate in the nine-month Catalyst professional development and networking program offered by Repair the World and the Jewish Federations of North America. Each Catalyst cohort receives training on how to engage local “next gen” — that’s young adults, the next generation — in the work of the federation through volunteerism and Jewish learning initiatives.
Participants were asked to propose a service project at one of their federation’s beneficiary agencies – either starting a new project or amplifying an existing one. Repair the World awarded Ms. Schwartz a $7,000 microgrant to implement a volunteer project she suggested at JFCS.
“I chose JFCS because we fund a lot of their programs in mental health and social services, and I knew they have a food pantry,” she said.
The pantry, which serves at least 200 families each month, began about 15 years ago as a closet with emergency provisions for existing clients of the Teaneck-based agency. By 2015, it had grown into a separate program, complete with case management, open to the community at large.
When Ms. Schwartz asked JFCS’s director of volunteer engagement, Stacey Frenkel, how she might best aid food pantry recipients if she received the grant money, Ms. Frenkel gave her a surprising answer: Clients would love to get such items as spices and sponges, which aren’t normally available in the Corner Market.
“The Community Food Bank of New Jersey gives allocations to all food pantries in the area, and it is wonderful, but the allocations are often just for food,” Ms. Frenkel said. “Tracy helped us with items we couldn’t ordinarily get unless we have financing to buy them ourselves. We were so happy to know we could give spice packs to clients to flavor their foods, and supplies to clean their homes, which are so expensive.”
Ms. Schwartz said the request seemed random to her at first, “but these are the things people need, and they’re not always the things we think to donate to food pantries along with a box of pasta or cereal.”
To bring the project to life, Ms. Schwartz “sent out a lot of emails and made a lot of phone calls” to women whose contact information was in the JFNNJ database because they had donated or been involved in some way with the federation.
Ms. Frenkel told her that peanut butter and jelly are also perennially popular items at the food pantry, so Ms. Schwartz planned to include them in the packages. She used the image of “spreading the love,” like peanut butter and jelly, to recruit participants.
Eight young women, aged 30 to 45, stepped forward to pack the kits: Melanie Aronin of Woodcliff Lake; Nicole Barbalat of Hillsdale; Julie Ferraro of Upper Saddle River; Arielle Kamen of Ramsey; Brittany Topilow Katz and Jillian Katz Wagner of Ridgewood; Jackie Lieberman of Tenafly; and Karen Todd of Haworth.
“I had two or three women whose mothers are board members of federation and one who has been heavily involved, as well as three brand-new women who have never been involved before in anything at JFNNJ,” Ms. Schwartz said.
On the evening of May 12, the group gathered at JFNNJ offices and assembled 300 care packages for distribution through JFCS.
“A lot of what I heard that night was that hands-on volunteering is more meaningful than writing a check,” Ms. Schwartz said.
However, the end goal is to use meaningful volunteering initiatives as a springboard for further involvement in educational and philanthropic opportunities offered by the JFNNJ.
“At the end of the day, we are a fundraising organization,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Every penny we get in, we give out.
“So, in addition to doing more volunteer projects, we are going to continue to talk about the beneficiary agencies and what they do. It’s not just about putting packages together and being done. We want these young women to feel invested and to continue to see what we do for the Jewish community in northern New Jersey.”
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