By David Slone
Times-Union
WARSAW — The logistics of feeding over 350 food-insecure families within the Warsaw Community School Corporation over the holidays is a daunting task, but one Edgewood Middle School and the school district have taken on.
Edgewood has held food drives for over 20 years, but Principal JoElla Hauselman said it got harder and harder to not only be able to feed the Edgewood families, but they also could hardly help the local food pantries because they couldn’t collect enough food.
“There was a time when we used to be able to go in the grocery stores and local citizens would help us fill the boxes, and then we would get them in the trucks and bring them here, but we were feeding our own. And the last two years, we struggled and we knew something had to change, so this summer I thought if we were going to continue, we can’t sustain with what we’re doing, it has to change. So I thought it would be a really good idea to feed them all! We could barely feed Edgewood, but let’s go ahead and feed them all. But if we all work together, what can we accomplish? And I believe in this community, and I believed in our schools and I thought, ‘We can make this happen.’ And it’s happening,” she said.
The food drive initiative, called “Together We Feed Them All,” is a total effort of the school corporation, the community, service organizations and 23 churches, she said. “People are hearing what we’re doing and the question is, ‘How can I help?’”
The cost to sponsor 30 families at a school is $4,500 or a family box is $150, and people and organizations have been stepping up to be sponsors. They’ve also participated by buying specific items like potatoes. “You give people options and people have stepped up to say, ‘JoElla, I’ve got that for you.’ It’s just tremendous.”
Tammy Adamiec, the Edgewood teacher who has coordinated the food drive for the past 15-17 years, said before this year the most they’ve ever done was 150 boxes. This year, they have to do 365 because some families are large and will get multiple boxes.
“We have one family that has 22 people living in their home, so they’ll get five family boxes because a box is designed for a family of four for the most part,” Adamiec said.
Hauselman said Edgewood’s students also are collecting food items, as are the students at all the other Warsaw schools. Each school is assigned specific items to collect, such as cold cereal at Madison Elementary and peanut butter at Harrison.
“And they get two weeks to collect their item with a target of, ‘How many do we need to fill the boxes?’” she said. “We will be picking up the last load Friday at the same time we are taking all the family boxes to the schools, but that’s because Edgewood will continue to build our boxes, and then we’re also going to be taking care of some of our employees within the corporation who would go without paychecks during the Christmas holiday.”
Adamiec said this year they just focused on food. In previous years’ food drives, families would also get things like laundry detergent, toiletries, paper goods, etc. “So we took all of that off the table and just focused on the food.”
Supporting Families
In deciding which families to help, Hauselman said they went to each of the schools and asked them to pick 30 families that could use the food boxes. They made sure that each family was only selected once if they had children at more than one school, but schools could have alternates.
“We’ve agreed now whatever it takes, we’re going to feed your alternates, too. If you’re on the list, you get fed. We’ll bring you food,” she said.
Teachers typically suggest families who might need the assistance, but each of the schools also have an idea of who the families are.
“This is two weeks – two weeks of no school, no free breakfast or lunch. These are kids that go home to food insecurity and they’re not sure when the next meals are going to come,” Hauselman said.
They partnered with the United Steelworkers of America who provided a check for the food drive. The Steelworkers also provided flyers about a Christmas Eve meal they will be providing to the families.
Combined Community Services has been struggling with their food pantry being very low, Hauselman said. “Our hope is, not only do we feed all of our families, but we’re really hopeful that there’s enough left that we can fill their pantries for both the Salvation Army and CCS,” she stated.
CCS got Edgewood in touch with the Northern Indiana Food Bank (NIFB), who provided food at a reduced price. “It’s been kind of crazy because originally when I found out what it would really cost, just to go to the stores, it was over $40,000,” Hauselman said. “Well, (we) didn’t have $40,000.” Thanks to little miracles here and there on a daily basis, it’s all been working out. “Like yesterday, we just got 700 frozen chickens. And 350 or more packages of chicken sausages.”
Of course, they had to figure out where to put 1,800 pounds of ground beef, the 700 frozen chickens and the packages of chicken sausages. Hauselman said they’ve worked out the frozen storage, with the perishable food items to be distributed to the schools on Monday. The nonperishable food items will go out Friday with the help of the Warsaw Community High School football team.
Transportation Director Mark Fick and the WCS buses will deliver the food boxes on Friday to each of the schools. The schools have already contacted the families to make arrangements of either the families picking up the food or it being delivered to them.
“I think the logistics, for me, is the hardest part,” Adamiec said. They got food from the NIFB and Meijer, but then had to figure out how to get it there, stored, packed and transported. “You have all the cogs moving, and I think making sure it doesn’t get stuck anywhere is the biggest (task). My problem right now getting stuck is that I’m running out of some stuff. That’s my biggest issue, but it really has been a huge group effort between JoElla, myself, Jim (LeMasters), Mark, Staci Light and the cafeteria people making room so we can put the hamburger and the milk and all the things in there. It’s just getting everybody and all the pieces coming together.”
To help support the food drive, Hauselman wrote a grant to Kosciusko REMC with help from Alex Hall from the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. KREMC gave the program $5,000 in matching funds.
Adamiec said Hauselman did a great job of getting funding for the food drive. “We’ve always had some funding. Kerlin has always matched up to $5,000 for us, and we have a private family that donates $5,000 to us usually, so there we have $10,000 to start, and we’ve had that for the past several years. And we buy most everything we need to make sure we have what we need for the family boxes, and then Mrs. Hauselman has done a great job of getting us grants and the community has stepped up.”
Classes make and fill the boxes.
There’s also some incentive for Edgewood students to collect items. If they collect enough, Assistant Principal Jason Culver will dress up like the Grinch. If they really, really go above and beyond, Hauselman agreed to dress up as a cow.
“It’s for fun. It’s for a good cause,” she stated.
As a way to raise money, students can purchase two tickets for $1 for a chance to put a pie in a teacher’s face. Hauselman is not participating in that one, but Culver and some of the teachers are. The money raised will all go toward buying more food.
Adamiec is not surprised at the community response to the food drive.
“I’m not. I’m elated. But every time I put out a need for something – some years we struggle having enough money to buy milk and meat … it just floods in. It’s awesome and I love it. And the kids, once they get a taste of what it’s like to help and do it, it’s contagious.”
The Future
While this is the first year for “Together We Feed Them All,” Hauselman said they’re already looking toward the future
“We figured if we could figure out how to do this, what would you do? We want to do something called Bridge the Gap. So we would like to do something similar for spring break and for fall break. So although it’s not quite the mega (event) that we’re doing this time with two weeks, it’s a one-week window, so we’re going to learn from this experience: What did they like? What did they not like? What would we put in a one-week box? And we’re hoping to raise enough money and get enough products in to be able to look at spring, look again at fall. And then if we do this correctly, it’s just continue the cycle, and, ideally, I’m hoping the churches will say, ‘JoElla, let us take over part of this’ so it doesn’t always land on Edgewood, but Edgewood is willing to own it because we’ve done it for so long and we’re committed,” she explained.
It’s not just a “one and done,” she said, but it’ll become just the way it’s done in Warsaw.
If kids don’t have their basic needs met and they’re hungry, they can’t learn, Hauselman said. “And if kids don’t connect with us with their heart, we can never reach their head. So we want the message to be, ‘We genuinely care about you, we value you, you are people and important to us. Your education is critical and we want to build you to be lifelong citizens that contribute to this society, but in the meantime your basic needs have to be met.’”
To Give
To volunteer, donate, help or learn more, visit the Warsaw Community Schools website at www.warsawschools.org and go to the link under “Information” for “Together We Feed Them.” There is a QR code to make a monetary donation. Hauselman said they’ve received over $3,000 that way.
People can also donate food items at Edgewood up until Friday, Dec. 13. Collections started Dec. 2. After this Friday, Hauselman encouraged people to support the local food pantries with their donations.
“Anything we have left after the family boxes are finished will go to the local pantries,” she said.
