For more than 25 years, Bonnie Schultz has made her way to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newburyport every week to make sure neighbors in need have access to a warm meal backed by a team of loyal help.
Called Among Friends, her program is part of a network of free lunches and dinners across Newburyport that ensure a healthy meal and social activity is available every day to anyone who needs it.
Using a small kitchen in the parish hall, Bonnie and a team of loyal volunteers serve dinner on Mondays and lunch on Tuesdays and dinner and Fridays every week, providing an average of more than 350 meals every week.
Like most of the region’s food providers, no one with Among Friends gets paid, including Bonnie. As the need has grown each year, every square inch of storage is used. Larger food donations were often not accepted, simply because there is no place to put it.
In the past two years, however, that has started to change. During the pandemic, the region’s food providers came together to form the Seacoast Food Providers, and started meeting monthly under the leadership of Our Neighbors’ Table and Executive Director Lyndsey Haight.
The partnerships inspired Bonnie to start fundraising and writing grants, and she secured $50,000 to update the hall’s 30-year-old kitchen. This past year, she created her first strategic plan.  
Out of those pandemic meetings also came the concept of the Seacoast Regional Food Hub in Salisbury, where local providers can now pick up their deliveries from the Greater Boston Food Bank and access additional storage. For Among Friends, it’s been a game-changer.
“We were having to use ONT’s van to go to Boston, and find cold storage at Shaw’s or other places,” she says. “Now we use the van to drive over the bridge to the Hub. It’s nice and easy for us. It’s so exciting.”
Among Friends is one of more than 25 food providers – from meal programs to pantries to markets – that will benefit from the infrastructure and efficiency provided by the Seacoast Regional Food Hub.
Imagine we could be the first region in the country to achieve universal food access for it’s neighbors. The last step toward that goal is community investment in this once-in-a-lifetime, pioneering project.
Can you help? Together we’ll fill every table.