Thurston County Food Project Connects Neighbors, Feeds the Community

Children and adults work together in the TCFP, proving that it's easy for anyone to have a hand in making their town a better place.
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By Sara Hollar, Olympia High School Intern to ThurstonTalk

Children and adults work together in the TCFP, proving that it's easy for anyone to have a hand in making their town a better place.
Children and adults work together in the TCFP, proving that it’s easy for anyone to have a hand in making their town a better place.

With all the great things going on in Thurston County it’s easy to forget that there are people suffering around us.  For some families it can be hard to get enough food to make it through the week. One in five children in our community might not know where their next meal is coming from because their parents have to choose between paying rent and buying food.

In Thurston County we are lucky to have a food bank to provide help for these hungry people. Around the holidays, schools, churches and offices hold food drives to help out our Thurston County Food Bank but how can the community aid the bank during the rest of the year?  That’s where the Thurston County Food Project comes in.  The TCFP isn’t a drive, but a sustainable collection. Participants focus on providing a steady influx of diverse and quality food to supplement the food bank. In addition to helping people in our area, the TCFP is devoted to strengthening the relationships between neighbors to build close-knit neighborhoods.

The Thurston County Food Project started four years ago when Olympia residents MaryBeth and Don Cline went to visit friends in Ashland, Oregon. There they learned about John Javna, who started the Ashland Food Project in January 2009. Inspired by the Ashland Food Project, the Clines brought the idea back to CRANA (Crain Road Area Neighborhood Association), their neighborhood association. The neighbors loved the idea and agreed to get help get the project off the ground.

“They all jumped in on it and almost all of the people at the meeting signed up to do this. We had another meeting and then we just set about creating it, using Ashland’s model. We passed the hat amongst ourselves, got a couple hundred dollars to get started. We used paper bags at first,” said Don. Over the years, grants from Olympia Federal Savings and the Community Sustaining Fund of Thurston County have enabled TCFP to grow. “We’ve gone from our paper bags, gotten donations from people, and we’re now able to get the really good green bags, which are critical. It’s very slowly expanded from the ground up,” he added.

The TCFP has spread from a handful houses in the Cain Road area to around 325 households. Besides Cain Road, donors are spread out in the Bigelow and Carlyon neighborhoods as well as households in Indian Creek

TCFP volunteers celebrate their food collection at Pioneer Elementary School. These volunteers and countless others put in time to try to stop hunger in their community.
TCFP volunteers celebrate their food collection at Pioneer Elementary School.

and Tumwater. All of these homes are divided into neighborhoods and monitored by a neighborhood coordinator. The idea is that each week the donor will buy an extra item of non-perishable food while shopping and store it in their TCFP bag until the next pick-up.

During pick-ups, which are the second Saturday of every month, each of the neighborhood coordinators pick up the bags from the area they are responsible for and take them to Pioneer Elementary School. There, the food is boxed and put on a Thurston County Food Bank(TCFB) truck so it can be delivered. Some families choose to donate money instead of collecting food, which is just as useful to the food bank.

The primary goal of the Thurston County Food Project is to provide a steady movement of food to the Thurston County Food Bank. Robert Coit, TCFB director, stressed that while drives and monetary donations were very important in running the food bank, the TCFP specifically supports Thurston County’s Choice Model. The Choice Model allows patrons of the food bank to choose what food they take, rather than being given a bag of items they may have no use for or interest in.

A key player in the connection between the TCFP and the food bank is Fran Potasnik, the Thurston County Food Bank liaison. “Right from the beginning, Fran joined us and she’s been at every meeting. She is invaluable because some of our ideas we think are great but from the food bank’s point of view they’re not. Plus we constantly need to get information from the Food Bank,” Don said.

MaryBeth also emphasized the importance of having a group of dedicated individuals like Fran who were invested in the project. “It’s really important to have a base group that’s committed. The group that we started with four years ago is the same group we’re with now and they’ve been with us the whole time. None of us knew each other at all and we’re not even close neighbors but we’re all good friends now and we know all of our neighbors which is fantastic. It’s a neighborhood builder,” she said.

Roz Thompson was one of those supporters of the Thurston County Food Project from the very beginning. “Initially I got involved because we would go to different CRANA events. I thought it would be great to get to know the neighbors and I always like to do something positive. So when they first introduced the Food Project I thought it was a really good way to give back to our neighborhood and our community,” she said.

Owen and Drew Thompson collect Thurston County Food Project bags from their neighbors about four years ago, when the project began. Families, like the Thompsons, who have been involved with the TCFP since it's creation were able to the project get off the ground.
Owen and Drew Thompson collect Thurston County Food Project bags from their neighbors about four years ago, when the project began.

Thompson’s 16 year-old son Owen has recently gotten involved with the organization as well. Along with fellow teenagers Devan Hollar and Willa Jeffers, Owen has gone canvassing to try to introduce new people to the project. He also works collecting and packaging food. “It’s an easy way for teens to help out,” Owen shares. “Plus, you feel good about yourself knowing that you really helped people out.”

Most of all, the Thurston County Food Project aims to unite people in order to help their neighbors. “The long term goal is to keep our neighborhood very connected with an incredible sense of community and to have other neighborhoods adopt our program where we can have a model for them but they can be independent of us other than walking them through, providing everything that they would need initially,” said MaryBeth.

The neighborhood coordinator for the Bigelow neighborhood, Barbara LaForge found out about TCFP through a friend and contacted MaryBeth to get involved.  LaForge was especially interested in the idea of getting to know her neighbors. “My neighborhood, The Bigelow Neighborhood, is small but with an unusually high number of multi-family units.  I liked the idea of getting to know some of these apartment dwellers, and perhaps getting them interested in participating in our neighborhood association activities,” she said. She also emphasized how easy it was for her to participate in the TCFP. “The CRANA folks have it so organized and are so helpful that except for needing to raise the money for the collection bags it is a no-brainer.  I cannot emphasize how helpful they have been in providing everything needed.”

The Clines and all those involved with the Thurston County Food Project would love to see it expand all around our city, county and beyond. The TCFP is a fun way to interact with your neighbors and makes it easy to help out your community. You can participate at any level you chose, from being a donor, to a neighborhood coordinator, to helping pack up food for the food bank. If you are interested in learning more about the Thurston County Food Project click here for more information.

The Thurston County Food Project is more than just a food collection. It is an example of the power of neighbor to neighbor interaction and the idea that changing the world begins with one family reaching out to another for the common good.

Want to pitch in?  The Thurston County Food Project’s next pick up is scheduled for April 12 at Pioneer Elementary School.  Collection is from 10 a.m. to noon.

 

 

 

 

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