news article

Feeding the spirit: Summer Lunch Wagon ministry a success

July 16, 2014 / By UNY Communications / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Susan Hardy, Reaching Our Neighbors Ministry Oversight Team (RON MOT) member, has toured some of the ministries that received grants in RON MOT's 2013 round of funding. In this story, she recounts her visit to Schenectady Inner City Ministry's Summer Lunch Wagon.

Until I toured some of the Schenectady Inner City Ministry's (SICM) outreach programs, I didn't realize that a pastor could be employed full-time outside the walls of an actual church. The Rev. Phil Grigsby, United Church of Christ, has been ministering throughout his community for nearly three decades. Fruits of such ministry are not hard to discover.

Rev. Grigsby wrote a grant proposal to fund a second SICM Summer Lunch Wagon for the summer of 2014, and Upper New York Conference funding of $5,000 was approved through Reaching Our Neighbors Ministry Oversight Team (RON MOT) in the fall of 2013.

The grant proposal identified three goals:

• to increase by 20 percent the number of meals served;
• to support operation of a second mobile unit to expand the range of deliveries;
• to provide nutritious meals Monday through Friday for the 10 weeks of summer.

 First UMC in Schenectady was one of the initial four congregations that got SICM going in the 1960s, Rev. Grigsby said. Albany District Lay Leader Shirley Readdean, a member of First UMC, helped organize my visit to SICM.

On July 8, 2014, as part of a planned  evaluation, I stopped at the site where the SICM Summer Lunch Program collects, stores, and packs daily lunches for hundreds of youth ages 18 and younger. I was met by several energetic volunteers who were happy to accept my offer to help pack some of that day's lunches.

In assembly-line fashion, we packed a healthy meal of either a turkey bologna or peanut butter sandwich, a packet of raw carrots or broccoli, a pear, and a snack item into each paper bag. Beverages were kept in separate coolers until served.

Completed lunches are packed 10 in a crate, so running counts are easier to maintain. Lunches distributed each day are tracked by a spreadsheet created by the lunch program's administrator. This helps to ensure that no child is turned away, nor are undistributed lunches wasted.

According to Rev. Grigsby, "SICM's original Summer Lunch Wagon saw an increase from 42,000 lunches to 53,430 lunches by the end of the 10 weeks – a 27 percent increase."

Those numbers support the success of the proposal's second goal.

The second SICM Summer Lunch Wagon began operating at the beginning of this summer.

Rev. Grigsby explained that distributing the lunches using smaller, handicapped-accessible school buses – and in many cases their regular drivers – helped establish trust and acceptance with the children's caregivers. SICM also found that those particular buses had more room inside for stacking multiple, color-coded, crates and coolers.

As even more volunteers arrived to accompany the buses and help distribute meals, Rev . Grigsby took me on a short drive to visit some of SICM's ministry sites. I noticed at one tiny playground how a few small children from one family multiplied into a dozen or more youth of all ages once the bus parked and the SICM banner was displayed. Toddlers in strollers clutched those lunch bags, as did teens on bikes.

Reaching Our Neighbors had asked for measurable goals as part of its summer 2013 grant application process. I found that SICM met or exceeded each of its goals. SICM is reaching – and blessing –neighbors who live in challenging circumstances.

I also witnessed how the lives and spiritual health of this diverse group of volunteers are being transformed as their combined gifts and graces are exercised through this ministry.

Read Hardy's story about Caring Connections in Oneonta here.