 Hi, welcome to Arlington's community update today. I'm here with Sarah Gupta of Arlington eats. Thank you for coming out to meet us today It's great to be here. It's really nice to be a part of it Yeah, so first I'm gonna have you introduce yourself. Tell us how long you've been with the organization. Okay So my name is Sarah Gupta and I am the program manager of school-based services for Arlington eats Arlington eats has been in existence as Arlington eats since 2014 But in 2016 we merged with the Arlington food pantry, which has been in existence for over 20 years and Are now one big organization under the name Arlington eats working to address food insecurity here in Arlington Awesome great And tell us about The weekly services of Arlington eats when does when do you meet when where are you meeting? Wonderful. Yeah, we are in one of the main features of the Arlington eats programming weekly Wednesday mornings and Wednesday evenings is a market that's available for anyone in Arlington that is experiencing food insecurity They just have to demonstrate proof of residency. That's all we look for We also through the schools offer snack programs at all the schools within Arlington We offer vacation lunches on both the February April and summer vacations for students that might be getting free and reduced lunch Through the school year, but then don't have access to that when schools out. So we provide that service as well And a number of other things in the community. Yeah Excellent. And so right now we are here at the St. John's Church, which how long have you been setting up shop here? That's pretty recent. I think it just past summer was when we kind of made the official transition And that is because where we were on Broadway is getting I guess you would call renovated to become a new commercial slash Residential space where we will actually have a beautiful new Arlington eats market Hopefully within the next couple of years, but in the meantime st. John's has graciously shared space with us So we can keep operating the market. All right. Well, that's very exciting So I've heard that you have an event every year called beats for eats Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely beats for eats is one of our major venues or Events for raising funds to support our programs. It's every year in March and this year It's on March 28th at the town hall and it's a lot of fun. There's like a very Full and splendid silent auction. We have live music that will really always gets people moving there's always dancing at beats for eats and And great food and talk and company It's it's a wonderful way to kind of get together and celebrate and also raise money for the cause Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun So March 28th next year if you're looking to have some fun at town hall get some money going for Arlington eats That's something to keep in mind and if people want to volunteer with your organization, how can people get involved? So the best way would be to go through our website. It's www.arlington eats all one word org and right when you get to the web page the face page Home page it tells you are you looking to do this or this and one of the options very clearly is volunteer? Yeah, so that would be a real simple way to get it and if you Don't have access to internet or online Certainly feel free to call us at our office and we're happy to share opportunities with you as well And what are some of the options for volunteering? We have weekly? Markets obviously morning and evening so there's assistance needed with setting up and Monitoring and kind of making markets flow and cleaning up afterwards We have Greater Boston food bank deliveries every other Monday So that's a lot of unloading boxes and kind of getting stock put away There is set up for the markets on Tuesdays where people are kind of coming in and getting everything set up And we also accept donations on Tuesdays So we're getting boxes and bags of food that we have to go through and check expiration dates and kind of sort and shelf and then for the school-based programs there is Obviously the vacation lunches where we need people to help with serving and prepping and kind of keeping things flowing and Set up and clean up and then with the school-based programs in the snack program We have weekly groups where people can come together and help pack the snacks that we provide within that program All right, awesome. So anyone who's looking to give back to Arlington. This is a great organization to work with You know, I'm sure we all have some food in our pantry that we haven't used So even if it's just donating a few things it would certainly help them out And what is the best way for the town of Arlington to get in contact with Arlington Eames? I think our new and very Lovely and full website is a good place to interface about it about our services and about getting involved So that's www.arlingtoneatsalloneword.org and our office number is 339-707-6757 All right, great. Well, that's all the questions I have for you today. Thank you for all that information it was great to meet with you great to hear about your organization and Hopefully we have some more people coming in to help out because sounds like you got a lot on your hands But it's good work and we really appreciate you helping us talk about it in the community. Yeah, absolutely Okay, so anyone who's looking to get involved with Arlington Eats. You can find them at their website and hopefully we'll see you guys around