The Meet Hope Podcast
The Meet Hope Podcast
95: "We'd Love to Have You." (Part 1) Stories of HOPE's Food Pantry with Dave Falcone
Join in for the first of two episodes where Dave Falcone, Executive Pastor and now HOPE Food Pantry Director, shares stories of local businesses, volunteers, and organizations that make the pantry a cornerstone of community support. This episode shines a light on the collaborative spirit and dynamic volunteer engagement that keep the pantry thriving. We had so much great information to share and stories to tell, we decided to make this episode into two! Be sure to check back next week to hear more from Dave about how he has seen God show up recently as well as an exciting new initiative from the pantry this fall.
NOTES:
- email Dave at dave@meethope.org.
- get connected to the pantry at meethope.org/foodpantry.
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
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Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast. My name is Ashley Black. I'm excited to be your host today, and joining me today is Dave Falcone. Hey, dave.
Speaker 3:Hey Ash, How's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going good. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Good.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So we're having you on the podcast today to talk about a couple of things. We're going to talk about the food pantry, which also includes a shift in your role here at church. And also an exciting thing that is coming up towards the holiday season for the food pantry.
Speaker 2:So from time to time we do an update on the food pantry, and it's been a little while, so I thought it would be great to have you update our listeners on what is happening at the food pantry. So what are some of the most recent things that have happened in the last couple of months, like through the summer till right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, you mentioned a shift in my role. It wouldn't be, um, I wouldn't be an employee of Hope Church without my role shifting every couple of years. As most of our listeners know, I have and still serve as the executive pastor here at Hope For a number of years. I'm going to continue in that role, but one of the things that I am going to be doing as part of that role is overseeing the food pantry. We have seen, I would say, an explosion of need down at the food pantry since the start of COVID. In the early years of that explosion, we were blessed to hire Erica DePalma as our food pantry director and she really expanded to what it is today. And then, for personal reasons, erica decided last summer that she was going to work until the end of the summer and then just take a break, and she deserved it for all that she put into the food pantry.
Speaker 3:In the meantime, we were looking for somebody to run the food pantry and we were blessed to have somebody step in temporarily for 90 days, as he was between jobs, and that was Scott Cruz, and Scott stayed on for what was supposed to be 90 days to 10 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to try and do the math in my head.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I think secretly, we were just hoping he would stay on forever, and I think secretly, we were just hoping he would stay on forever. Yeah, but he got a job back in the private sector, where he was previously working, and so it left us without a director role again. In the meantime, we were just entering into the summer and Pastor Jeff sat down with me and said hey, for a couple of months, I just need you to cover things down there. I said sure, because what's one extra thing on top of a full-time?
Speaker 2:gig, why not?
Speaker 3:But what turned into one extra thing? I think secretly, jeff knew that I was going to love it and so I'm staying on in the role. I'm very excited. I'm very passionate about the ministry and what we do there. I have really big shoes to fill between Erica and Scott and I would happily let one of them come back and take the role in a heartbeat. But a lot of good things have happened over their tenure and just a quick recap. During COVID we went from a small closet to a closet plus a classroom, plus the cry room off the worship space. We started to take over the lobby and then eventually, under Erica's leadership, we moved down to what is the building at the corner of Centennial and cooper the old bank um the meeting place and, uh, we retrofitted that building to work.
Speaker 3:We added some refrigeration units. Uh, we had a, a walk-in refrigerator donated by acme, um, and that was a blessing yeah, I remember that that was really cool yeah like how do you, how do you get a giant refrigerator from Acme to here?
Speaker 2:Like I remember the logistics of that and it being like I would never think of that.
Speaker 3:Somebody knew somebody, who knew somebody Right yeah. Made a phone call and all of a sudden Acme said we have an extra refrigerator.
Speaker 2:And wasn't it at a time that we really needed a refrigerator?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like the refrigerator was not working. And it was like the refrigerator there was not working and it was like what do we do with all this food? Do I remember that right?
Speaker 3:We had two refrigerators in the building. They just weren't enough. Oh, they were full.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we quickly realized how much we really needed more refrigeration. And then we quickly realized after that how much we needed more freezer space. So through a mini capital campaign we did a few years ago, we bought a walk-in freezer which is sitting next to the walk-in fridge, and so things really expanded during that time. We realized over the course of those couple years, as the ministry kept growing, that we needed more space. But you can't really add more space to a building that has clearly defined walls unless you expand the building. But last year, during Scott's tenure of running things, he had a creative idea of well, what if we just take down a couple walls that are just in the way?
Speaker 1:We have an office down there.
Speaker 3:We don't need an office. We have this one wall that creates a hallway. We don't need that wall. Nothing was load bearing, there was nothing above those walls in the ceiling, and why not get rid of them? There were multiple bathrooms down there. We got rid of one of the bathrooms, so that space opening up created a much bigger room, and one of the things we did was we were able to add shelving, and it may not seem like a big deal, but we had 91 linear feet of shelving units down there before that. Okay, and so, to give you an idea, one shelving unit is like one shelf that you would set up and put like up against the wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Each shelf has, like, multiple shelves on there, but it's one shelving unit. Yeah, so we had 91 linear feet of shelving units. So, to give you an idea, that's about 20 to 30 actual shelving units. With the expansion we added an additional 132 linear feet of shelving units.
Speaker 2:That's a lot, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:In the math world, that would be a 245% increase in shelving, and with that the idea was you know, we have great opportunity as we partner with the food bank of sometimes they have things like cereal available. And they might have it this month, but they might not have it three or four months from now or until three or four months from now, and cereal takes up a lot of space. I don't know if you, you know you have, you have kids at home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we actually have those like containers that you take it out of the box and you put it into because it just like saves space, because, yeah, but even then it still takes up a lot of space. Yeah, it takes.
Speaker 3:it takes up a lot of real estate, and so for us to provide a box of cereal for everybody in the food pantry that comes through our line, we're talking, you know four, three or four shelving units, you know it. Just all right, so that you know that's a lot.
Speaker 2:Stuff that you don't think about, and that's for one distribution. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, uh, by expanding and adding shelves, it allows us to get things from the food bank, um, when they have it available, which means less money we have to spend on that and uh, you know, it gives us the ability to spend money more creatively and more strategically. And um, so that was.
Speaker 2:That was uh really exciting to be able to uh expand that space, and it's allowed us to um take what I would call fun and exciting products from the food bank, which is awesome, because that just speaks to the desire to like, promote the like wellbeing of everyone that comes through the food pantry, or the humanity of everyone that comes through the food pantry. Right the like. It's important that you get cereal or that you get fun extra items, that it's not just like. Here are the basics, you know. Like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It speaks to the integrity of the food pantry when I hear you say that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know we're, we're serving human beings. Yeah, exactly, we're not just going through road just drop bags in cars and push them through. Just drop bags in cars and push them through. We had a young man volunteer last week from Sweet Green and we had him fill in for one of the nicest, most welcoming people in the world who stands in the front of the line and just says hi to everybody as they walk through. And we told this young man, we said your job is to talk to everybody. He's like okay.
Speaker 3:So we looked over every few minutes and he is engaged in full-blown conversation with every single patron.
Speaker 2:Which is awesome Because that takes the right kind of person who is excited to do that.
Speaker 3:And it raises the level of dignity.
Speaker 2:Because the patrons that come through they're human beings they are.
Speaker 3:They are no different than you or I, except right now they just need a little more help. Yeah, exactly, many of us have been in that situation before, but so last, as I was kind of saying is last distribution we were able to give out things like tortillas and salsa to everybody. A few distributions ago, we were able to give out ice cream and frozen pizzas to everybody. It's things like that that are just an extra special blessing.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's awesome. So you mentioned this guy from Sweetgreen. What other connections has the food pantry had with the local community? I I know that there has been them because you often will send me a picture when somebody comes to volunteer and we'll share it on our social media and thank them. So does that happen? Often it feels like there are a number of partners that have come through the food pantry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm. I guarantee I'm going to forget mentioning somebody here, as as I do, but I love to try to give the shout outs when I can. One of the things I love about the food pantry is it's a ministry of hope church, but it's a community of people serving the community, and we have a lot of volunteers down there that are not part of hope. Some people just drove by and said I want to get involved. Yeah, it's a, I want to get involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great place to do that, like in this community, like, even though I think about being a Voorhees resident, like if I didn't come to Hope, it would probably be somewhere we would want to serve because it's yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3:So we have, you know, we don't limit our volunteers to, you know, checking their membership at Hope. At the Door we have a woman who I was talking to the other day. She is from a Jewish background and she brought me in a loaf of challah bread and I know I butchered the name of that and I apologize, but she wanted it, with the holiday coming up, the Jewish holiday coming up, uh, that I uh could participate in some way, and it was delicious, that's really cool.
Speaker 3:It was really good, um, but you know, so we have, we just have a number of people that come and volunteer and get connected. Uh, we have, we have a couple of people that um come over almost every week from the AWA and partner with us Um, the animal welfare association. For those that don't know what the AWA is, they're located across the street. The AWA donates dog and cat food to give out to people on the line. We don't think about things like that. When people are hungry, their pets are also hungry too, and so it's a nice little thing. We have a great partnership with the people over at the Bank of Princeton formerly known as Cornerstone Bank right on 73, across from Aldi and BJ's and Lowe's. They have partnered with us for a number of years in lots of creative and unique ways. I had mentioned Sweetgreen already. Go be a patron to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're in Marlton, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I believe so, um, uh, it's on my list to go check them out, but they've sent a team of people a few times to come and just volunteer during work, like you know. Very cool, I love that. Um, there's a. There's a local company called star of the seafood star of the sea seafood, um, and, and they provide seafood to a lot of restaurants in the area and the owner had reached out to Scott a while back and just said hey, I'd like to donate crab cakes and fish cakes. And so a number of times in the past five, six months, we've given out crab cakes to people in need. We've given out fish cakes to people Like how awesome is that?
Speaker 2:I love that all of these organizations are not hesitant to be like I. I only have a specific thing Like I like. Crab cakes are my thing but, I want to give them. You know like I think sometimes it can be easy to like, box ourselves into, like, oh, the food pantry really needs non-perishables, or the food pantry really needs we're talking about cereal. You know that that dog and cat food is a thing, or that crab cakes are a thing you know that? Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a lot of partnerships like that we have. We have this thing called retail rescue partnerships and so that's through the food bank where we partner with some local stores. So there are three Dollar Generals in Clementon that we pick up from once a week and we'll get things like milk and bread and chips. And one of those Dollar Generals the manager there is awesome and she has connected us with the bread guy and the chip guy. Their thought is why waste this? It's still good. You know, the best buy date isn't an expiration date, it's just a sell buy date. So we do that. We have a number of people that pick up from Panera a few times a week and it's bagels and bread and sweets and things that we give out Costco. The amount of breads and sweets and prepared meals we get from Costco is amazing. Bj's same thing, shoprite. I can't tell you how many times we'll have somebody come back with a cart full of frozen meat that they are no longer allowed to sell.
Speaker 2:Right, but it's still good, but it's perfectly good.
Speaker 3:Wawa, we get a lot of those, the pre-made sandwiches that they have at the counter when you go. They're allowed to sit out for a certain amount of time. Then they have to pull them. They throw them in the freezer and then donate them. That's nice and we try to give like three or four to a family and I heard recently from one parent that when they get home, their kid asks what sandwiches did you get from mama this week?
Speaker 1:It's like that's just very cool yeah.
Speaker 3:And then we try to have some working relationships with uh, some other unique partners Like uh, recently there were a couple of students from Eastern high school that reached out. Uh, they're part of the interact club, um, and they're looking for community service opportunities and way to partner with us, and so we're in the process of of uh setting that up and and uh in doing so. Uh, right now we're looking at about every other Monday afternoon we're opening up the food pantry down there for about two hours for high school students to come and volunteer.
Speaker 2:I love that. I really like that Because I know when it used to be under Erica, usually there was a certain time of year where students would need their hours signed and she would be usually reaching out to me to say like, hey, I can't use them, can we use them somewhere else?
Speaker 3:And we're going to track their hours all year long. Yeah, like that's sign off, like if I were in charge of that club. I'd be like thank you, that's awesome, you know so cool and really so that time is more than just for Eastern's interact club.
Speaker 1:It really is an open time for high schoolers.
Speaker 3:I was talking to a young woman who is a student over at Paul VI and she was volunteering this summer and I said, if we had a time, would you be interested? Yeah, I'd absolutely be interested and I have two friends that might come too and like, all right, you know, well, it's there, you know, pass the word. And again, it's just a way to provide an opportunity for students to serve and and be on the the other end, because for 18 or so years they have been served by their parents.
Speaker 2:So I like that. That's awesome. So all of that is very exciting. Is there anything else that's exciting you about the pantry right now, as you've newly stepped into this role?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I. I have enjoyed the people the most and for those that know me well, that doesn't surprise them at all.
Speaker 2:When you shared that this was going to be the next thing. Like I remember talking to my husband about it, chris, who you're friends with, and we were like this makes complete sense. Like we were like why has no one ever thought of that? Like not that it you had other things that were very important that you were doing, but it it combines all of your gifts like in a really beautiful way, like service and people and logistics you know, and so, anyway, it's very exciting. So what are you excited about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I'm excited about the people I. I'm down several days a week, so I spend time with different volunteers every day, and each group of volunteers has their own unique personality. And so there's a group of ladies that are down there on Tuesday afternoons and they like to bust each other's chops and goof around and laugh, which I'm like that's great. I love that there's a group on Thursday and they are get things done, but they are, um, they are, they probably have the biggest heart of any of the other volunteers and not and that's not discounting any of the volunteers, it's just I've seen, um, uh, the group on Thursday, especially their leader, uh, sandy. Um, she, she would give you the shirt off of her back and then go to the store buy another shirt to give you if, if, she could, and that that mindset is so spread around to the people on Thursdays and just watching them interact with some of our patrons too is just just, it's heartwarming.
Speaker 3:I guess you know I'm not an emotional person, but you know, you know, I find it very heartwarming and very kind. I'm really enjoying some of the deeper conversations I'm having with people down there. I'm enjoying the interactions I'm having with some of our patrons, of our patrons, and there's stories and differences that I'm seeing, that we're making and how we're seeing God really show up. This is a ministry of Hope Church and so I'm seeing God work through that ministry throughout this time. Hey everyone.
Speaker 2:So we realized that we have so many fun things that we want to share about the food pantry and this episode was getting a little long and we wanted to be respectful of your listening time, so we decided to split it into two parts. So please be sure to tune in again next week for the second half of our episode about the food pantry. In the meantime, if you're looking to learn more about the food pantry, you can head to meet hopeorg slash. Food pantry and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1:Pantry, you can head to meethopeorg slash food pantry and we will see you next week. Thanks for being a part of the Hope Community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at meethopechurch.