 Hi, I'm Leslie McVane. Welcome to CTN Highlights. My guest today is Katie Brown, the Executive Director of the Locker Project. Hi, Katie. Hi, Leslie. Great to see you. Well, the Locker Project is a fairly new organization. It's been in existence, what, two or three years? Two and a half years. Two and a half years, and it's growing, growing. Exponentially, quickly, yes. Tell our audience a little bit about what the Locker Project is, what the mission is, and what you're doing. Sure. The Locker Project has food pantries in schools so that kids who need food at home can access it and take it home. And we have pantries in 20 schools now, tenor in Portland and other towns such as South Portland, Westbrook, Falmouth, Soco, and we are continuing to expand further into Cumberland and York counties as our capacity allows. Portland in particular has a really high rate of food insecurity among children. Three out of four children in Portland are food insecure. The statewide average is one out of four, which is still incredibly high. We're the number one in New England for food insecurity and number nine in the country. That's correct. Yeah, we're on par with states like Mississippi, which are very in really rough economic shape. So we have a huge need and our success is unfortunately based on the need that is out there. So while we have 20 pantries in 20 schools open right now, there are at least about six or seven just by word of mouth who have heard of us who are on our waiting list for us to open pantries when we can. And this was started by a mother who was volunteering in her child's class. Exactly. And it started right up on Monroe Hill at the East End Community School when she and other Katie Wallace was volunteering in her daughter's kindergarten class and noticed that there were always a handful of kids who had to sit out of snack time. So while the other kids were refueling for the rest of the day, these kids had to sort of buy their time and wait. And when Katie realized that for whatever reason, their parents just didn't have the means to send their kids to school with extra food, she started bringing in snacks for those kids. And eventually all the teachers at the school thought she was the magical snack lady. Did she have some snacks for their few kids and their classes? And so she was spending a lot of her income gladly supplying snacks for all these classrooms. Eventually she and the nurse opened sort of an experimental shelf in the nurse's office with some take-home items just to see if any of those kids might need to take some food home, and they did. And it grew from there. Good Shepherd Food Bank gave them a $4,000 grant that was supplied by Morgan Stanley to be able to go to the Good Shepherd Food Bank warehouse and initially just paw through their salvaged donated food and restock the snack pantries and the food pantry itself. And after a couple of years of that, there were folks interested in having that program grow to other schools. And that's where I came along and we made her the board chair and I became the staff person who put the nonprofit together. And this is a year-round pantry. Correct. So how do the children access it during, because most of the pantries are in the schools? That's right. And the schools are closed in the summer. That's right. So what happens in the summer? Well, some of the schools actually stay open through the summer, especially some of the special needs schools where we are, they will stay open year-round. But also many of the schools have summer programming, both the rec department but also summer school programming. So at those schools, we keep the pantries stocked and they're well used. Thank you. But we also are doing more and more fresh produce distributions both during the school year and especially during the summer. So we're getting fresh produce from a lot of different sources and it's gorgeous stuff. And we'll show up at a site and put it out on a table and students and families can come by and take that food home. So in the school year-end and the summer as well. Are you working with the farmers market? Actually not with the farmers market, but that's a group that we want to speak with. But we get a lot of those farmers produce, either directly or through Good Shepherd Food Bank. We also get fresh produce donated from Hannaford Brothers, some of the stores, when they're just taking their produce off the shelves to make room for the new stock. And it's wonderful stuff and it's not getting wasted because they're giving it to us and we're distributing it among the students and families. And have you talked with the teachers or the administrators in the schools about the difference this has made in the children's attention span and learning? Absolutely. Yes, and we in Good Shepherd Food Bank have tried to do a qualitative as well as anecdotal sort of encapsulation of how that's gone. And absolutely the feedback has been stupendous about, excuse me, one of the schools told us at the end of last school year that even though their students who have been accessing the pantry are still technically food insecure, they don't necessarily know where their next meal might come from once they're home. It's like they're acting as if they're not food insecure anymore. That confidence has made such a difference and their abilities to focus during the day. They know there's a place they can get some food. That's right. And for people who might want to help with the project, it really, it only costs $150 a year to help, I mean, that's sort of a... For one child, yes. For one child. That's amazing, that's nothing. It's nothing, yes. And if they want to contribute or get in touch, they can get in touch with you at... MainLockerProject.org, our website is one place they can get in touch with us. They can also call our number at 899-9540 and they're also welcome to email me at infoatmainlockerproject.org but our website has a link to our donation page and a link to our Facebook too. We have a lot of stuff that we post on our Facebook page in terms of our events and the outcome of our pantries, et cetera, et cetera. Pictures of our volunteers and whatnot. Well, I mean, I know, you know, just to see a child sitting in class when everyone else is eating and they don't have anything I can imagine and I know the teachers are restricted because of food allergies and things. I guess they can't do that and it must have been such a weight off of their shoulders to have Katie Wallace come in and discover this. Absolutely. Well, thank you and keep up the good work and if people want to donate food to the Locker Project, they can leave it here. You can go to their website and see the list of food items that are acceptable. The kid-friendly food items are particularly helpful and yes, that list is on our website. So yes, please, if you're willing to accept the donations here, we will pick them up on a regular basis. That sounds great. Thank you so much, Katie. And thanks, CTN.