The season of giving is upon us! Our Neighbors’ Table services are only possible thanks to the village of volunteers, donors and community partners who make food security a priority. Here’s how you can help this holiday season:

• If you participate in Giving Tuesday, please consider keeping your giving local with a gift to ONT.
• If you’re interested in joining our volunteer corps to give your time, fill out a volunteer application to start the process. December holiday grocery distribution is right around the corner and we’ll need volunteers to help move the food.
• Looking for a gift for the person who has everything? Consider a gift in their honor. If you provide their address, ONT will send a letter to the person letting them know a donation has been made in their honor.
• Hosting a holiday party? Ask folks to bring a donation to ONT instead of a hostess gift.​

Every dollar donated puts food on your neighbor’s table. For assistance in making your gift, please contact Lesley by email or call 978-388-1907 x13.

​​“It Takes a Village” was the theme of ONT’s 2022 Annual Breakfast and we were thrilled to gather with our village of donors, volunteers and partners on the last Tuesday of October at Blue Ocean Event Center. The Annual Breakfast is ONT’s true celebration of the efforts of so many to create a food secure region.

Institution For Savings has consistently supported the event as our Presenting Sponsor. Dana Marshall returned as our Master of Ceremonies, and Board president Eve Lee presented the Community Champion Award to our fellow Seacoast Food Providers. These organizations are dedicated to our shared mission of ending food insecurity in Northeastern Essex County. Many programs offered by the Seacoast Food Providers are completely or nearly all volunteer run. Despite financial hurdles, a global pandemic, and a weakened volunteer core, these organizations persevered to ensure everyone in our community is given access to healthy food.

Seacoast Food Providers:
Pettengill House; Among Friends Meal Program; Newbury Food Pantry; Rowley Food Pantry; Georgetown Council on Aging; Salisbury Council on Aging; Merrimac Council on Aging; Groveland Council on Aging; Abundant Food Pantry (Georgetown); Community Action, Inc; Amesbury Council on Aging; Our Neighbors' Table

Thank you to all of the sponsors and donors who helped raise a record breaking $97,000! 

As we look to the future, ONT was excited to unveil the developing Seacoast Food Hub project that will increase food security across the Lower Merrimack Valley.

See you all next year!

Steve Blanchette is no stranger to positively impacting his community. He currently serves on the finance committee at Newburyport Bank, The Firehouse Center for the Arts, Immaculate Conception Parish, and the Saint Basil’s Salvatorian Center. In 2017, he was looking for ways to positively impact his community and began volunteering in ONT’s warehouse. Since then, he has been a cornerstone of our Wednesday Meal by generously donating his time and resources through the Sponsor & Serve program. He first started at the meal to get involved in the community and teach his sons about giving back. He mentioned the importance of  “teaching the kids that not everything is about us all of the time. We are in a position to help and it's important that we do.” Steve believes in treating every guest as though they are dining at a 5 star restaurant. 
Steve grew up in Georgetown before attending Pennsylvania State University. After graduating, he began work with Alliance Bernstein in New York City and subsequently moved to Newburyport in 2003. In his free time, Steve enjoys spending time with his wife, two sons, and Golden Retriever. He also enjoys skiing and playing soccer. 
The ONT Market and Meal Sponsor & Serve opportunities offer a unique chance for group volunteer service with a financial commitment. When the “serve” portion of the program was interrupted in 2020, Steve decided to continue his sponsorship and make frequent donations to the Wednesday Meal. When asked about why he wanted to continue his involvement in the program, Steve said, “We weren’t sure where the world was going to be headed at the time and we did not want to leave our ONT community hanging." Steve encourages participating in Sponsor & Serve to support both the volunteers and guests. “You are helping people who are hungry and also helping people who give up so much time for ONT. There is no downside whatsoever.”
Thank you for all of your support Steve!

Steve Blanchette, a Georgetown native now living and running his business in Newburyport, has been a cornerstone of our Wednesday Meal since getting involved just before the pandemic hit in 2020. His goal was to get involved in the community and teach his sons about giving back. He believes in “teaching the kids that not everything is about us all of the time. We are in a position to help and it's important that we do.” Steve believes in treating every guest as though they are dining at a 5-star restaurant. 
Read more about Steve Blanchette Here

​The ONT Market and Meal Sponsor & Serve opportunities offer a unique chance for group volunteer service with a financial commitment. When the “serve” portion of the program was interrupted in 2020, Steve decided to continue his sponsorship and make frequent donations to the Wednesday Meal. When asked about why he wanted to continue his involvement in the program, Steve said, “We weren’t sure where the world was going to be headed at the time and we did not want to leave our ONT community hanging." Steve and his family have returned to serve in 2022 and encourage participating in Sponsor & Serve to support both the volunteers and guests. Click this link to learn more about Sponsor and Serve!

When I started at ONT in 2010, it was not uncommon for us to make urgent pleas to the community to keep our pantry shelves from going bare. In subsequent years, we made a lot of strategic decisions to ensure the shelves would never be empty so that our neighbors could have consistent, reliable access to healthy food – the very definition of food security. ONT’s Markets – our free grocery stores – maintain a standard of quantity and quality product to increase food security for our guests. Even throughout the pandemic, ONT has been able to maintain its food supply, despite challenges at local grocery stores. ONT’s resilience was thanks to the strength of its partner Greater Boston Food Bank and the network of local partners like US Foods and DeLuigi’s where ONT could access a wide variety of quality fresh foods to stock our Online Market.

But today, we are feeling the pinch. Ongoing labor challenges for our partners are impacting the logistics of accessing food in our network. Consequently, ONT is faced with purchasing those foods that our guests need and value most – meats, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables – and to put our trucks on the road more to find the food all at the same increased costs affecting everyone else. We are committed to maintaining our Market standards – ensuring every person who shops has access to a wide variety of product and can access the quantity they need to feed everyone in their household. As we have throughout our 30 years, we’ll get creative and call on our partners and on you to pitch in where you can. As we head into Summer and prepare for the surge of families relying on us in the absence of school meals, will you pitch in? Every $1, even with today’s inflation, still affords us a meal’s worth of groceries for our guests.
 
Ever wonder what distinguishes ONT’s Markets from your traditional food pantry?  The first distinction is the shopping experience. Every guest is welcome to shop like they do in a traditional grocery store, wandering the aisles at their own pace, pushing along a shopping cart, and selecting the products they prefer and taking the quantity they need to meet their needs. Unlike a traditional grocery store, all of the products are provided free of charge.

Second, the food offered is driven by the requests and needs of our guests (like businesses use customer research and feedback to design their products). In order for ONT to meet our free grocery store standards and wear our “ONT Market” brand, the storefront must offer at a minimum, our standard product menu. The specific foods within each standard category are selected to cater to that Market’s customers’ requests.
 
ONT’s Market Standards:

• At least three fresh fruit options
• At least six fresh vegetable options
• At least one type of meat
• At least one type of bread
• A variety of at least 16 different non-perishable items
• At least one roll of toilet paper along with an additional toiletry item

​ONT’s Summer Lunch Program (SLP) was designed to offer families additional breakfast and lunch foods to help feed kids who are home from school for the summer. It's estimated to cost an extra $300 to provide the meals a child would have received at school, which combined with camp or childcare costs can be overwhelming for so many families. The SLP provides a solution and has been helping ease parents' summer worries for over a decade.

​There is no additional registration needed to participate in the SLP. Every ONT family with children in their household will automatically have extra breakfast, lunch and snack items to add to their grocery order each week beginning June 14 through September 3. Families in our region who aren't current guests can register with ONT anytime on our website or call 978-388-1907 to start shopping weekly. ​

Dee Morse has been a great influence to Our Neighbors’ Table as the organization evolved over the years. Joining in the early 1990’s when her friend asked her to draw a logo, she is still here 30 years later because she “just hasn’t been able to let go of ONT.” When asked to reflect on her almost 30-year commitment to the organization she said, “ONT has changed drastically over the years. We started in the Church with 8 people volunteering at the Meal and a table of canned goods that we called a food pantry. Now look at it!” She continued, “There is a warehouse full of food, [the organization] has its own building, and there are employees!” While Dee was on the board, the organization decided they needed to staff an Executive Director. Dee says, “The best decision we ever made was to hire Lyndsey Haight for the job. She has done such amazing things for this organization and the community.”

Before moving to Kingston, New Hampshire, Dee lived in South Hampton for 45 years. She grew up in Maplewood, NJ and went to College in Connecticut where she met her husband. Dee was a pediatric medical assistant in Haverhill and used to play tennis and garden. Now, she enjoys playing pickle ball in Florida during the winter, taking walks, and travelling.
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To the many people joining Our Neighbors’ Table now, 30 years after its founding, Dee Morse wants you to know that ONT is still serving the community and beyond. “The organization fulfills its mission and follows its heart with staff and volunteers who are wonderful to be around.” She enjoys the connections she has maintained with people she served over the years as their lives change. In one instance, a little boy receiving a prepared meal wanted to give ONT his birthday money so he could help someone else. Dee loves that she is part of providing food security to thousands of people.

Thank you, Dee Morse, our 2013 Community Champion, for all you have done for the community and for Our Neighbors’ Table.

Did you miss ONT's Volunteer Town Hall on Tuesday, March 22? View the recording here!

While the calendar has turned another year, 2022 feels a lot like a new version of 2020, far from a pandemic or crisis-free “normal.” We are looking out at the horizon knowing that we can’t return to working and living like we did in 2019, but rather how we must adapt so we can live full lives, support our community and move forward. At ONT, the guiding voice for how we adapt is that of our guests, our neighbors experiencing food insecurity. We heard from more than 500 households last year that they need ONT to continue offering a hybrid of in-person and curbside groceries and meals. Our focus in the coming months is to make that a reality. It will require new and different resources, some internal re-organization and participation of our guests and from you, our community. ONT is not adapting alone. We are working closely with partners across the region, our fellow food providers across the Lower Merrimack Valley, our leaders, Greater Boston Food Bank, and our local food producers. With change comes great excitement and, sometimes, angst. We’ve spent the last 30 years evolving to break down barriers to food security; we’re well equipped for this challenge.

I look forward to sharing more with you this Spring and working beside you to continue our quest for a Food Secure Region by 2029.
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Here's to an early Spring!
Lyndsey Haight
​Executive Director

Lisa Hayes came to Our Neighbors’ Table at a crucial time in our growth as an organization. She started in 2019 as a reception volunteer and while she was in the office, saw that some of the data entry processes could be streamlined with a bit of Excel expertise. After Lisa completed that project, ONT Executive Director, Lyndsey Haight, and Program Director, Lori Townsend, found out about Lisa’s professional background in supply chain management. They asked if she could help automate and review the ONT inventory system. Lisa became an integral part of automating food procurement, budgeting, and shifting ONT programs to the SmartChoice online ordering system at the start of the pandemic. This made huge strides in ONT’s ability to organize and efficiently distribute food through our Warehouse and Market, and to be able to pivot quickly to a curbside model when Covid-19 ceased in-person shopping.

“Lisa came in with a "can do" attitude, knowledge at a level far above our own, and was able to work with us to listen to what our needs are. She thoughtfully developed systems that responded to our needs and supplied the expertise, leadership, learning and tools to implement the systems,” Lori said of Lisa’s impact, “The time, energy and patience she has devoted to ONT have resulted in some colossal improvements to our operations - things that no one else could do - that have been an essential contribution to our ability to provide for our guests and accomplish our mission.”

Lisa says she loves “being able to help ONT achieve their mission while working with staff members as a volunteer consultant.” Lisa is continuing to help in a leadership capacity as ONT looks to improve operations and evaluate additional changes.  With the new inventory system in place, different challenges have become apparent. “The Warehouse and Market are very crowded,” Lisa said, “If ONT had more space, it would allow for better flow when bringing food in and out of the building.” Efficient flow is important because easier volunteer mobility leads to better serving ONT guests.
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We’re so thankful that Lisa chose to donate her time and expertise to ONT! Lisa received a bachelor’s in Elementary Education from UNH and a Master’s in Business from UMass Lowell. She retired as a global supply chain manager in 2016 after many years of supply chain work that frequently took her to different parts of Mexico to oversee operations and is currently teaching Supply Chain Management and Six Sigma classes in the graduate program at Southern New Hampshire University. Lisa has lived in the area for her whole life and currently lives in Merrimac. In her free time, Lisa likes to do remodeling projects, gardening, taking her dog, Casper, for walks, and handcrafting for numerous charitable organizations.