ALL ARE WELCOME "Run For Your Lunch" 5.5K fights hunger in Middleboro, MA

Fighting Hunger in our communities is important as too many in our own towns and cities deal with hunger on a daily basis.

One woman in Middleboro, MA is making a big difference "one meal at a time"

Road race benefits Middleboro community kitchen

Taunton, MA — Taunton Gazette 01/20/13

More than 200 participants in the second annual Run for Your Lunch raced five and a half kilometers before dining at the finish line on Sunday.

It was all to help All Are Welcome community kitchen in Middleboro, which is a type of restaurant with a policy of asking its patrons to pay what they can afford for a meal.

“I think it’s fabulous for everyone to come out and support us,” said Karen Cook, who founded All Are Welcome last year, opening it in March 2012 using funds from the inaugural Run for Your Lunch Race. “I have friends in road race community. It’s a fun thing to do. To put the community kitchen work and the running together is a lot of fun. We’ve got a lot of community support.”

Each participant paid at least $20 to run the road race and to have a lunch of clam or corn chowder, along with freshly baked bread and desserts. The race was based at the North Congregational Church.

All Are Welcome operates twice a week inside Middleboro’s Episcopal church, the Church of Our Savior on Union Street. On Thursdays a community meal is offered at lunch time, featuring soups, salads, sandwiches and special hot dishes, while breakfast is served on Saturdays.

The concept of the community kitchen is to provide restaurant-quality service while relieving hunger, Cook said. More fortunate guests pay what they feel is is a fair price and more if they wish to contribute additionally to the cause, while those who are fairing less well financially can pay what they can or volunteer.

Cook said the model has been working well since All Are Welcome opened.

“We are starting to see the need of the community and are starting to reach the community who needs us,” she said. “Whether you’re poor or not, you should be made to feel welcome and should appreciate the meal. We serve in a church, but we are definitely a restaurant. We are not a soup kitchen. We try to provide a restaurant atmosphere. For the most part, it seems to be working.”

For Paul Nickerson, of Middleboro, it was his first road race. Asked how it felt, his one-word response was “tiring.”

Nickerson said he knows for sure that the 2013 Run for Your Lunch was for a good cause, because he has eaten at All Are Welcome and said the food served there is excellent.

“This race was a good time, and there’s a sense of accomplishment,” Nickerson said. “The community kitchen is a good cause. I’ve had breakfast a few times and it’s good stuff.”

Sunday’s road race was also dedicated to Mary DuPont, a member of the board of All Are Welcome who died of pancreatic cancer on Nov. 11. All Are Welcome pledged to donate $1 to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for every pre-registered entrant in the 2013 Run for Your Lunch race.

Runners like Adam Petti, 15, of Raynham, said he knew DuPont’s story and that everyone was wearing orange in honor of her.

“It’s good when a community comes together and helps different causes,” Petti said.

One of the youngest participants in the road race was Raynham’s Gregory Melusky, who is 10 years old. Melusky said he was proud to help out All Are Welcome.

“The race was tough and it felt longer than it really was,” Melusky said. “I think the All Are Welcome is a great cause. I like to support it because there are some people out there who don’t have any food to eat. Raising money here is giving those people an opportunity to have a lunch and breakfast.”

 

RUN FOR YOUR LUNCH 5.5K Road Race - Jan. 15th, 2012

I am posting the enclosed info along regarding an upcoming Road Race & Fund Raiser for Middleboro, MA based ALL ARE WELCOME in Middleboro, MA on Sunday January 15th, 2012. The race will start & finish at North Middleboro Green, 38 Plymouth Street, North Middleboro, MA 02346 at 1:00 p.m.

You can sign up at their website - www.allarewelcome.us

ALL ARE WELCOME is working to fight hunger and food insecurity in our community by establishing a Donation Cafe & Bakery in Middleboro that allows all to have access to good nutritious food regardless of their ability to pay for a prepared meal. The target is to raise $5000 to start serving nutricious meals in February 2012 to those in need in our community. Even if you are not from our local area, your support is needed as many hands can lift a heavy load.

The RUN FOR YOUR LUNCH 5.5K road race will allow ALL ARE WELCOME to get the operation up on it's feet and start serving the community. Run, Walk and/or join them for lunch to support a great cause.

You can contact Karen who is the Executive Manager at her email address manager@allarewelcome.us or her phone 508-443-0243. ALL ARE WELCOME also has a mailing address of ALL ARE WELCOME, P.O. Box 1244, Middleboro, MA 02346

Any support you can lend would be deeply appreciated. Even if you don't run, you can join them for lunch on Jan. 15th as your purchase of lunch the day of the race will also support ending food insecurity in our community. All contributions (large & small) are important to helping meet the goal. Please send this info along to others you know who might be able to assist.

Thanks again for all your help.

Michele Obama's federal school lunch program scores a " F " as in FAILURE

There is a real need to feed kids at school. For many, it is the best food they may get at anytime during the week, especially in poor communities. The staples of veal cutlets, mac n' cheese, chicken, hot dogs & beans fed generations of school children. Now, we have the lefties trying to push an unpaletable mix of trendy foods on kids when all they really want is the food that tastes good to them.

When you hear that the main reason they are making a change is " for the children", then you know that you are being rooked. There is a way to make sure kids get a good meal without serving up food that kids don't like and won't eat. When we waste food and tax dollars, we leave kids hungry and fail. In the end, this type of program allows the lefties political gains to be met, but the children leave hungry.


Michelle Obama's Unsavory School Lunch Flop
By Michelle Malkin

The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama's Nanny State intentions. Don't take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief's healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing.

According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city's "trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop." In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama's federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for "beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads."

Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified's food services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a "disaster." While the Obama administration has showered the nation's second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, "(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away."

This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce.

This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year.

Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program "sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat." The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students' reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the "free" food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging our children to eat healthier, of course. There's nothing wrong with well-run, locally based and parent-driven efforts. But as I've noted before, the federal foodie cops care much less about students' waistlines than they do about boosting government and public union payrolls.

In a little-noticed announcement several months ago, Obama health officials declared their intention to use school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls. Never mind the privacy concerns of parents.

Big Government programs "for the children" are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn't see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that "unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria." The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider.

Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama's federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: "Cede the children, feed the state." And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband's deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs.

In L.A., the district's cafeteria fund is $20 million in the hole thanks to political finagling by SEIU Local 99. The union's left-wing allies on the school board and in the mayor's office pressured the district to adopt reckless fiscal policies awarding gold-plated health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers in the name of "social justice." As one school board member who opposed the budget-busting entitlements said: "Everyone in this country deserves health benefits. But it was a very expensive proposal. And it wasn't done at the bargaining table, which is where health benefits are usually negotiated. And no one had any idea where the money was going to come from."

Early next year, Mrs. Obama will use the "success" of her child nutrition campaign to hawk a new tome and lobby for more money and power in concert with her husband's re-election campaign. It's a recipe for more half-baked progressivism served with a side order of bitter arugula.

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

Retired naval commander going all-out to feed hungry children in Maine

I had the pleasure of serving with LCDR Bloom as she was our XO at the USS Constitution when I served there in 1997 & 1998 for the Bicentennial Celebration.

It's great to see she is continuing to serve those in need especially hungry kids.
Her website is http://www.end68hoursofhunger.org/

Please help her and the kids she serves.


Retired naval commander going all-out to feed hungry Seacoast children
Foster's daily Democrat - Maine

After retirement – What comes next?

For one retired officer, "next" means helping hungry children.

LCDR Claire Bloom retired from the Navy in 1998 from the USS Constitution, following which she started her own business teaching internet based courses to help students all over the world become certified in Integrated Resource Management.

More recently, however, she has a whole new gig.

In October 2010, at a women's book group meeting while discussing a book set in a highly impoverished area, a member of the group, who was also a teacher at a local elementary school, made the comment that she had children in her classroom who from the time they finished their free lunch on Friday, until the time they had their free breakfast on Monday, had nothing to eat.

Bloom decided at that very moment that she could not sit back and do nothing about this tragedy which existed right in her our own community, so after the holidays she contacted the local school superintendent's office and spoke with the homeless coordinator for the school system.

That person was able to point Bloom towards a number of national programs designed to eliminate this kind of weekend hunger. Bloom chose a plan based on a model used successfully all around the nation to get backpacks with non-perishable food in them to select children at the end of the school day on Friday.

The children would take the food home to eat during the weekend, and bring the empty backpack back to school on Monday, and it would be refilled for the following week.

It took her four and a half months to get her application for a 501 (c) (3) (Not for Profit) program approved by the IRS, and so in the middle of May 2011 she started working on the substance of the program.

The initial funding was her own and her husband's, but her first stop was the local branch of Bank of America, where she was welcomed wholeheartedly, and given a free checking account, checks, ten duffle bags, and her first team of volunteers as well as some guidance on applying for a grant from Bank of America.

Her second stop was Atlantic Mini Storage where she was offered a 10' x 30' storage unit with 24 hour access, a $2030 “in kind” contribution.

With a checking account and a place to store food and pack backpacks, she contacted Target and was given $250 in storage bins for the food, and Home Depot where she was given $75 in shelving.

Then came volunteer training where her first three teams were trained.

Her own church, St. John's United Methodist Church, discussed the project at a church council meeting and agreed to host a food drive every Sunday. the results of which would be divided between this project and the local Food Pantry. The church also agreed to sponsor a volunteer team as well. Thus far each week she has received enough food for two or three backpacks.

Her son's company, Newmarket International, agreed to sponsor a fundraising drive, so she picked up all the backpacks that the superintendent's office had and the Bank of America duffle bags, and took them all to Newmarket.

The employees filled 57 backpacks with food from the on line shopping list, and donated $750 through a raffle and direct contributions. They also agreed to be her third volunteer team.

Through a contact at Newmarket she was contacted by Prime North Acura, and they held a customer food drive in October and agreed to put together “goodie bags” for Halloween, for the December Vacation, and for the spring vacation, which will be added to the food in the backpacks.

She contacted all the local churches, and one invited her to share their booth at a local street fair. Since it costs approximately $500 per year to feed one child, she also invited individual sponsorship of either a week or a child.

The fourth team came from a local political group, and the fifth for those rare months in which there are five weeks from a church youth group.

The children enrolled in the program are identified by the guidance counselors and nurses at the three elementary schools, their parents are contacted and their agreement to their child's participation is secured, and the children are told what to expect all through the school system.

Neither Bloom nor her volunteers ever have any contact with any of these children. The program is totally anonymous.

Additional funding came from Liberty Mutual, the Walmart Foundation, and two local car dealerships.

The next challenge will be how to feed these children during school vacations.

The volunteer teams collect empty backpacks from the schools on Mondays, fill them, and deliver them back to the three elementary schools. She started with 26 children in the program and within one month the program had increased to 49 children.

A recent article about a similar program indicated that the first year the program started with 30 students, just as this one is. The next year there were 350 students enrolled.

She has already been contacted by two other towns about how they can capitalize on what she is doing. Since she already has the domain name, the website, the 501 (c)(3), the email address, the phone number, the mail box, the storage unit, and liability insurance a nearby town can join in quite easily with their own volunteers and additional contributions of funds and food.

Children who are hungry on the weekends probably exist in your own communities, and the organizational skills we learned in our military careers can help us all to help them. Together we can eliminate this challenge faced by young children through no fault of their own!

For more information, you can check out her program at http://www.end68hoursofhunger.org/