The Buckland-based Mary Lyon Foundation has teamed up with Ashfield’s Hilltown Churches Food Pantry to provide fresh, local groceries to families of students in need who are enrolled in summer programs run by the Mohawk Trail Regional School District.
Both the Mary Lyon Foundation and Hilltown Churches Food Pantry serve families and schools in the westernmost communities of Franklin County. That’s why the food pantry’s director, Patricia Thayer, feels the partnership is a “natural fit.”
Kristen Tillona-Baker, executive director of the Mary Lyon Foundation, said one of the foundation’s donors volunteers at the pantry. In May, when she went to observe how the Hilltown Churches Food Pantry operates, the idea for the partnership was planted.
“I was overwhelmed by how fabulous their food program was,” she recalled. “They were just packing up these wonderful bags of groceries for these families.”
Tillona-Baker left the pantry that day wondering how she could implement a similar food program in correlation with the Mary Lyon Foundation’s mission and service to students.
“Food scarcity is such an issue in West County,” Tillona-Baker explained. “Fifty-four percent of schoolchildren are on free or reduced lunch.”
She struck up a deal for the food pantry to give a week’s worth of groceries to up to 20 families in the Mohawk Trail Regional School District every other week throughout the summer — and possibly beyond. Tillona-Baker and Thayer say this is a program that could continue past the summer, as the urgent need for food for some students and families does not end with the season.
Required from interested families is demographic and financial information to ascertain need. Tillona-Baker is the “conduit” between the food pantry and the families, and suggests that any families looking to take part in the program contact the Mary Lyon Foundation at 413-625-2555 or office@marylyonfoundation.org.
The first distribution is expected to begin on July 13, during the first week of the Mohawk Trail Regional School District’s “Explorers Program.” In speaking with Alia Woofenden, the school district’s summer program director, Tillona-Baker said the two were able to put their heads together to figure out how to use the summer program’s bussing system to get groceries to families signed up. If families can’t pick up their groceries, the groceries will be delivered by bus when the children are returned home from the summer program.
Groceries include nutritious items. The Hilltown Churches Food Pantry, Thayer said, receives fresh, local produce from places such as the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Marty’s Local in South Deerfield and families in the community who donate their extra produce or plant an extra row in their garden to support the pantry. Vegetables, fresh eggs and yogurt are part of the push the pantry has made over the last four or five years to serve community members healthy, fresh food.
The mission of the Mary Lyon Foundation, “to promote student success by mobilizing community investment in services and programs that create positive educational outcomes,” ties into the food pantry’s goals, and hence directly into this summer food program, according to Tillona-Baker.
“Making sure students feel cared for, are well-fed and well-clothed so they feel ready to learn,” she continued, is what the foundation strives to achieve. She said the partnership between the two nonprofits is an example of “the community linking arms and working to support people.”