Local Organizations Fight Hunger During the Summer Months

Summer is often the toughest season for non-profit organizations, which depend on donations from schools and other community groups that close their doors for the season. 

“The demand stays the same over the summer,” said Leslie Koppel of Rise Community Services in Hightstown. “It’s even higher, actually, because the kids are home from school, so they don’t get the free breakfast and lunch that they often get.”

The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are typically the high season for donations and resources are often strained by the time summer rolls around. Local organizations like Rise have become creative and found ways to tap into different channels of donations during the summer months. 

Rise partners with the Trenton-based Farmers Against Hunger, a consortium of local farmers that provides fresh produce to food banks. Produce that is not absolutely flawless can not be sold to consumers, even though many of it is still perfectly fine to eat, Koppel explained. Farmers Against Hunger distributes this excess food to local food banks, providing them with fresh, seasonal produce. 

"Our season picks up a lot in the summer months," said Kristina Guttadora, Assistant Executive Director at the New Jersey Agricultural Society, which runs the Farmers Against Hunger Program. "Whereas other people are fully stocked at Christmastime with all the donations, we’re fully stocked from July through December."

On any given day, the organization is busy moving about 10,000 pounds of produce from farms to pantries. Of the 1.2 million pounds of food collected annually, about 500,000 pounds come from farms during the summer. 

Non-perishable donations are not as common in the summer, according to Koppel, and these fresh donations help fill the void.

“Right now we have cucumbers,” said Koppel. “Regular farms contribute a lot too—local farms or people from their garden will bring excesses of food in.”

Local organizations fighting hunger collaborate frequently in order to conserve resources and reach as many people as possible. Rise also receives donations from the Mercer Street Friends, which channels over 2.5 million pounds of groceries each year to 60 charitable food providers like Rise, Koppel said.

Rise has also tapped local summer camps such as Eagle’s Landing Day Camp, which organizes a food drive and provides the organization with volunteers during the summer. In general, Rise sees an influx of volunteers during the summer, mostly local high school kids and some teachers who aren’t working over the summer. 

Rise also runs its own summer camp, providing free breakfast and lunch to the 105 low-income children who participate. This helps abate the strain of supplying three meals a day parents must give their children once school is out for the summer. 

Community Relations and Development Specialist at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen J. Steinhauer said that every year is different when it comes to the demand for food. Summer brings around a different demographic of people because there is a greater demand for work, such as yard work, in the warmer months, Steinhauer explained. Nevertheless, the demand for food this summer has stayed the same, according to Steinhauer. 

TASK served over 90,000 meals in the months of April through August of last year, a rate that is generally on par with the rest of the year. Donations do wane throughout the summer, according to Steinhauer, as most people are on vacation and community service might not be the first thing on their minds. The summer also brings new demands, particularly for hygiene products and services for kids who are out of school until September.

TASK collaborates with Rise and provides weekly community dinners at local churches in Hightstown—the First Presbyterian Church on Mondays, and the First Methodist Church on Thursdays, between the hours of 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. Anyone can walk in and receive a free meal, which is freshly prepared on-site by TASK. 

In total, TASK runs five satellite meals a week, including one in Princeton and two in Trenton. The ever-growing demand for these meals indicates an increased need that extends past the summer months. 

“We were able to meet the growing need from the recession because we were able to expand our meal-service program to serve more communities,” said Steinhauer.