Food Drive Helps Concord Kids

Three people, from completely different walks of life, different professions, playing different roles in the Concord community, have come together to help the families of a handful of elementary school students to make sure they have food on the table when they aren’t in school.

A holiday food drive is being conducted at a few different locations in the city, the food of which will be used for the Grace Episcopal Church’s Take-A-Tote program.

The program, which services about 20 families at the Mill Brook Primary School, collects food and then distributes the items to the children on Friday afternoon, which they then bring home to their families to ensure that they have food to eat during the weekend.

The 20 children are all currently in the free lunch school program, said the Rev. Jason Wells of the church, and tend to be refugee families that live along Loudon Road or poorer kids who live in the Heights. But that only helps them not be hungry during the day, when school is in session. The program seeks to assist during the times the children aren’t in school, like weekends, vacations, and during the summer.

“There’s really sort of a systemic crack in the system,” Wells noted. “Kids go home on Friday. And these kids on free or reduced lunch often have very little or sometimes nothing to eat until they come back to school on Monday.”

Wells said that many of the students were coming into school hungry from the weekend and sometimes sick because they hadn’t eaten. The totes seek to serve as an interim food supply for the families when the kids aren’t in school.

“They come back to school on Monday, ready to learn,” he said.

The program started at Eastman Elementary School two years ago and then moved to the Dame Elementary School and now covers Mill Brook since the two schools combined. Wells said the program has the capacity to assist 20 families but it was not enough since there were more families that needed assistance.

“We could quintuple the size and still not satisfy the need,” he said.

Kosmas Smirnioudis of the Windmill Family Restaurant, a Loudon Road fixture with long ties to the city’s immigrant community that makes frequent charitable donations, noted that the family believed that none of the city’s children should go hungry on the weekends.

“There’s no reason why kids should go hungry,” he said. “Everyone has a chance to help out … to do something about it. And that’s what’s he’s doing. It’s plain and simple. It’s not the kid’s fault that he can’t have anything to eat.”

Jessica Fogg, a local social media coordinator who also works with the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce, said there are other programs that help the hungry, such as food pantries, but for whatever reason, communication problems, inability, or pride, the families weren’t signing up for assistance and the children were being harmed in the process.

After hearing about the program, she decided to help, by setting up drop boxes at the Windmill, True Brew Barista, and other places to collect food for the program.

“Again, it’s not the child’s fault that his parents won’t take care of them,” he said.

Smirnioudis said he was really shocked to hear that some parents were “lazy” and not making sure that their children had food. He said there had always been an unspoken rule that no matte what happened in life, parents would ensure that their children were fed, the “you eat before I eat” ethos, if you will.

“We do have this problem not just in New Hampshire but in the United States,” he said. “It’s very sad. They shouldn’t be doing that. This country was made on the opportunity to be successful and be happy and help others if they can’t help themselves.”

Smirnioudis said that is why his father has historically provided the free meal to the homeless on Thanksgiving and why he was now allowing Fogg to put the drop box for the Take-A-Tote program, in order to help out the effort.

“I’m 100 percent behind what the church is doing,” he said.

Fogg said Smirnioudis’ support was “really wonderful … he didn’t hesitate one bit when I asked him” to put the box in the restaurant. She said she became involved with the program after hearing about a Rundlett Middle School child who was having trouble and not even getting the free or reduced lunch while hiding his snacks and food from his dad’s roommates just so he could eat, a really sad story, she said. So she went to Wells to see if the child could be helped out. Wells said they really didn’t have the ability to help out more kids but made a commitment to help out anyway. After that, Fogg agreed to assist the program as another way to pay it forward.

“It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to help out,” Fogg said. “Even just a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese can help.”

Fogg said it was her hope to build the program up with other churches and organizations to make sure all the kids in the city can have a least a little bit of food when they need it.

“This is something that there aren’t enough people in the world that could help,” Smirnioudis said. “You can’t have enough people who can spend five or 10 minutes a day to bag up some food, back it into a van, and bring it to the school. You will feel a lot better at the end of the day.”

Right now, the bulk of the donations come from church members, Wells noted, with parishioners bringing in food on Sunday. The food is brought in and put in little baskets. It is then brought up to the alter and blessed.

“We see it as part of the whole ministry of the church,” he said. “But our church is only able to do those 20 bags. There is a bigger need. It really hurts so much. And it’s not the children’s fault. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

While most of the foods is coming from parishioners, the drop boxes will be a big help to the program, Wells said. The first pickup was done late last week and Wells noted that all the food filled up the back of his Subaru.

Items that are needed include:

• Cereal
• Instant Oatmeal
• Cans of Pasta with Meat
• Easy Mac Bowls
• Cup of Soup or Rice
• Cereal / Nutrition Bars
• Granola Bars
• Pudding Cups
• Fruit Cups