“Noodles, one per box,” Christine Jespersen told students in her independent living class at Mascoma Valley Regional High School one afternoon last week.
She handed bags of pasta to each of the nine students, who distributed them to overflowing cardboard boxes strewn about one of Jespersen’s family and consumer science classrooms. The boxes were intended for Mascoma Valley families in need of a supply of food for school vacation this week.
“Potatoes, one bag per,” Jespersen said, after the noodles had been distributed. Bags of apples followed, as did toiletries, walnuts and Snack Pack pudding cups.
The boxes began as a project of Jespersen’s independent living class six years ago. “It’s kind of grown to be my passion,” said Jespersen. “I don’t feel any kid should go without food. They need the calories for their brains to work.”
Based on the overflowing boxes, it’s hard to imagine how anyone in the district’s five towns — Canaan, Dorchester, Enfield, Grafton and Orange — could go hungry. That’s the point. Jespersen, her students and volunteers with the nonprofit Friends of Mascoma aim to make sure that everyone who needs something to eat gets it.
Though, in years past, Jespersen made do with donations from community members, the Friends of Mascoma founded its Friends Feeding Friends program last August and took over management of the Enfield and Canaan food pantries. Members of the Friends group saw an opportunity to add a food pantry to the newly renovated high school for use by high school and Indian River School students. Friends of Mascoma also provides food to students at the Enfield Village School and Canaan Elementary School, directly and through the Enfield and Canaan food pantries.
Food access was not an issue leaders of Friends of Mascoma, a nonprofit focused on education, thought they’d be addressing when they founded the organization in the fall of 2014. But, conversations with school staff highlighted the need to the nonprofit’s leaders.
“The school system had kids who were hungry all the time,” said Carolyn Cusick, a founding member of Friends of Mascoma.
Nearly one-third of the district’s 1,166 students qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education.
To make sure that students were fed, staff members — like Jespersen — were filling the gap. In past years, Jespersen had a small pot of money to buy food to fill boxes for school vacations, and she would seek out deals at area supermarkets.
With the new food pantry — one of the few to be housed in a New Hampshire high school — and Friends of Mascoma’s volunteer help, Jespersen doesn’t have to find all the food herself.
The pantry “allows us to get close to 10 times as much food for the money,” said Mascoma Superintendent Patrick Andrew in a telephone interview last week.
Students have easy access to the food, which means they have one less thing to worry about and distract them from their school work, Andrew said. In addition, having the food pantry at the school gives students an opportunity to perform community service without leaving campus.
“The kids can run it and kids can participate in it,” he said.
To stock the pantry, Bob Cusick, who is Carolyn’s husband and a member of the district’s School Board, drives a donated van down to the New Hampshire Food Bank in Manchester with fellow volunteer Bud Baker each Tuesday.
They get items Carolyn Cusick has ordered and also bring back whatever extras they come across — maybe a cake, school supplies or some red reindeer sweaters.
“It’s like Christmas every week,” she said.
By 12:40 p.m., during Jespersen’s students’ lunch period, Bob Cusick and Baker pull up to the high school. The students unload the van, carrying items such as trays of water bottles, boxes of toilet paper and the occasional cake into a large closet containing two refrigerators and cupboards. The Friends group procures meat from Price Chopper on Wednesdays and stores it in the pantry’s freezers.
The van often carries fresh fruits and vegetables from the food bank and from Willing Hands, a Lebanon-based organization that redistributes food that would otherwise go to waste. When the fresh produce can’t be distributed through the high school’s pantry quickly, Jespersen and her students often process and preserve it.
“It’s kind of like the show Chopped,” Jespersen said, referring to the Food Network’s show in which chefs compete to transform baskets of mystery ingredients into meals.
Jespersen and her students have made apple sauce, grape jelly, cauliflower soup and mango salsa. In doing so, the students have “learned a lot about farm to table,” Jespersen said.
Once complete, the students’ creations go into the food pantry.
The 50 vacation boxes Jespersen and her students put together last week are just one way the food pantry supplies get into the hands of people who need them. Indian River School staff were also putting together an additional 35 boxes with food from the pantry. High school students who need food know that they can get snacks such as granola bars or yogurt from paraprofessional Kathy Reed, who keeps easy-to-grab items in her office. Reed also oversees a weekend backpack program that sends food home with students.
The students need not demonstrate any particular need, which eliminates the stigma that can sometimes accompany food assistance, Carolyn Cusick said.
“The treats are available to any kid,” she said. “There’s a steady stream.”
So far this school year, the pantry has distributed 10,000 pounds of food, she said.
Before the truck arrived last Tuesday, a few students made macaroni and cheese using one of the stoves in Jespersen’s classroom.
As she ate her bowl of orange, cheesy noodles, junior Alyssa Hammond, of Orange, said that the students help manage all aspects of the food pantry. In addition to stuffing the boxes and unloading the truck, they unpack the items and organize them.
While it’s hard to measure the difference the pantry has made on students’ academic performance, it’s clear that caring for each other in this way helps to knit the community together.
Hammond said Jespersen is more than a teacher, she’s “always willing to help you,” she said. “She’s like my second mother.”
As the students prepare for life after high school, their work with the food pantry contributes to their understanding of “where to go if you need help,” said senior Brianna Monmaney, of Canaan.
Andrew said he considers the food pantry a stop-gap measure to address immediate needs. Ideally, the district would offer universal free lunch — something some schools in Vermont have begun to offer — to all students, but for now that is unaffordable, Andrew said.
“With the kind of wealth that this community has, to think that people are dealing with food scarcity,” he said. “We need to find ways to deal with that.”
For more information about Friends of Mascoma’s Friends Feeding Friends program, visit friendsofmascoma.org/initiatives.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
