SPRINGFIELD — On Tuesday, June 13 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Log Cabin in Holyoke, Rachel’s Table, a program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, will hold its biennial fundraiser, Bountiful Bowls. The evening will celebrate the organization’s 30 years of serving the community; honor its founders, mentors, and supporters, and share information about its launch as a new nonprofit entity.
“Rachel’s Table is the premier food rescue and distribution program in Western Massachusetts and wouldn’t be where it is today without those who contribute in instrumental ways,” said Jodi Falk, director of Rachel’s Table. “We look forward to celebrating our 30 years and honoring all those involved.”
Dave Brinnel, comedian and musician, will emcee the evening and will be joined by honorary chair and former state Sen. Eric Lesser. Among the honorees are the 10 female founders of Rachel’s Table in Springfield: Judy Ingis, Myra Gold, Susanne Osofsky, Liz Kittredge Rome, Patti Weber Weiner, Linda Skole, Ronnie Leavitt, Nancy Posnick, the late Daydie Hochberg, and Margie Berg.
The Springfield program was modeled after the first Rachel’s Table in Worcester and has grown into a full-fledged hunger-alleviation program, which is the main reason it is now becoming its own nonprofit entity.
Also being honored are four mentors that have helped Rachel’s Table in its most recent growth phase, offering their skills and talents in seminal ways. They are Janice Greenberg, Jon Lasko, Jerry Munic, and the late Joseph Dorison.
Finally, the Arbella Insurance Foundation will be honored as the entity that helped initiate the Growing Gardens program at Rachel’s Table, its food-equity and access program that works directly with those most affected by food insecurity to grow their own food.
Food, refreshments, film, and entertainment will support Rachel’s Table’s 30th-year celebration to honor its past, present, and future. Visit www.rachelstablepv.org to learn more about the event and purchase tickets.
GREENFIELD — Food-supply shortages are impacting local food pantry shelves, but Greenfield Cooperative Bank President Tony Worden and Merrill Gagne, founder of Gagne Wealth Management in Greenfield, are working to change that.
Jodi Falk, director of Rachel’s Table, a food-rescue program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, initially contacted Worden and Gagne to help purchase meat to stock local pantry fridges. As a result of their generosity, Rachel’s Table purchased 708 pounds of chicken, ground beef, and pork for local pantries to distribute over the holiday season.
In addition, Greenfield Cooperative Bank and Rachel’s Table partnered to create a non-perishable food drive to help the Franklin County Community Meals Program, Community Action’s Center for Self-Reliance, Salvation Army Greenfield, and the Stone Soup Café’s Free Store. The Franklin County YMCA joined the team, and the Franklin County community-wide “canned-do” food drive was born.
“Several factors are at work here,” Falk said. “One, hunger in Massachusetts is double what it was pre-pandemic, moving from 8.2% to 16.4%. Two, inflation makes purchasing food challenging for people as well as agencies. And three, there are some supply-chain issues that have made the typical avenues where agencies get food a little more complicated. Tony and Merrill stepping up so generously, and also encouraging their businesses to help out, especially before the holidays, makes a huge difference to our community.”
Now, Falk and Jessye Deane, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, are calling on other Franklin County businesses and organizations to join the effort.
“The need is great, but our generosity is greater,” Deane said. “The collaboration between businesses and nonprofits is so uniquely Franklin County. When there’s a need, we all come together to meet it. The responsiveness of Gagne Wealth Management, Greenfield Cooperative Bank, and Rachel’s Table represents the best of Franklin County.”
Rachel’s Table is making it easy for others to get involved by providing boxes (if needed) and offering donation pickup and delivery. A wish list of non-perishable items can be found at www.franklincc.org and www.rachelstablepv.org.
Organizations interested in helping or hosting their own food drive can contact Jay Levine at Rachel’s Table at (413) 733-0084, ext. 251. Individuals can drop off donated goods at the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce offices at 79 Old Main St. in Deerfield.
SPRINGFIELD — Rachel’s Table, a program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts (JFWM), unveiled its first refrigerated van, which was made possible by a $75,000 amendment filed by state Sen. Eric Lesser and state Rep. Brian Ashe in the American Rescue Plan Act.
Rachel’s Table also announced a new food-rescue partnership with MGM Springfield and that it would receive an additional $75,000 amendment filed by Lesser and Ashe to the FY23 state budget to support the program’s food-rescue work, including operational expenses that include the van’s maintenance. The announcements were made at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at MGM Springfield on Tuesday where legislators, local community leaders, nonprofit partners, and Rachel’s Table volunteers gathered to celebrate the news.
“In our 30 years of fighting hunger, we have found that we can have a bigger impact when various entities collaborate to create solutions that matter,” said Jodi Falk, Rachel’s Table director. “That is why we are overwhelmed with gratitude towards Senator Lesser, Representative Ashe, and MGM Springfield for supporting our work. Thanks to these amendments and our MGM Springfield partnership, we will be able to travel longer distances to rescue and deliver food as well as consistently provide a larger variety and thousands of pounds more of food to more people who need it most.”
Lesser noted that “Rachel’s Table is an organization rooted in community, fighting each day to tackle food insecurity and inspiring community activism in others. Their mission brings volunteers from various backgrounds and ages together to collect and distribute unused food to those who truly need it. I am grateful for their efforts and our ability to come together today and celebrate the inaugural trip of their new refrigerated van.”
Ashe added that “I’ve had the pleasure of working with and seeing firsthand the incredibly important work that Rachel’s Table does throughout our communities. Food is the fuel we all need to start our day and keep moving forward. Sadly, not everyone is able to have food on their table, and that is a travesty. I know that this refrigerated van will assist Rachel’s Table to reach even more people in need, and I’m proud to work with Senator Lesser, MGM, and Jodi Falk to help this come to fruition.”
After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the refrigerated van made its first official trip by transporting an MGM Springfield donation of approximately 3,500 pounds of surplus food to the Salvation Army Liberty, Clinical and Support Option’s Friends of the Homeless, Massachusetts Military Support Foundation, Springfield Rescue Mission, Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen and Pantry, Kate’s Kitchen, and All Nations Church. The new partnership between Rachel’s Table and MGM Springfield will be ongoing and consist of a variety of surplus food from its dining facilities. Depending on the type of food donated at the time by MGM Springfield, local partners will be selected to receive the food.
“MGM Springfield is proud to support Rachel’s Table by regularly donating surplus food to be distributed to those in need,” said Chris Smigel, MGM Springfield’s executive director of Hospitality. “We value our relationship with this incredible organization and are grateful to be part of their mission to tackle food insecurity throughout our community.”
The van will be driven by the Rachel’s Table fleet of volunteers who have been specially trained to drive it. The van will primarily pick up food requiring refrigeration, such as meat and dairy, and make deliveries six days a week throughout Western Mass. It will be able to transport up to four pallets and close to 2,800 pounds of food.
She’s Choreographed a Broader, More Holistic Mission at This Critical Nonprofit
Photo by Leah Martin Photography
Jodi Falk knows what it’s like to be like food-insecure.
For a brief time, she received assistance from the program known as WIC (Women, Infants, and Children). It’s not something she can easily talk about — and, in fact, it was something she couldn’t talk about until very recently, mostly because of the stigma attached to being in the program.
She recalled that time for BusinessWest, however, because, by doing so, she believes she’s helping to address that stigma, while also putting into perspective the feelings of those that she and the organization she leads, Rachel’s Table, serve day in and day out.
“Those were the days when it wasn’t a card you can give to a cashier or put in a machine, but checks to hand to a person who made sure that what you purchased was on their list — and this could take a while, which was embarrassing,” she recalled. “I used to look around the store to see if I knew anyone, and if I did, I would wait until I was sure they had left the store before going to the register.”
Elaborating, she said she is still embarrassed to talk about those experiences, but admits that they made her aware, and understanding, of what others may be going through when they are on government assistance. And she believes her story has given her some perspective that each individual needs to be treated with “dignity and care.”
In short, those experiences have helped in her role as director of Rachel’s Table, a program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, and they are not the only chapter from her past that she says has earned that distinction.
Indeed, Falk spent many years professionally as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, both here and abroad. And while her work administering Rachel’s Table might seem worlds removed from those vocations, the skill sets, and her many experiences in those roles, dovetail nicely with her current assignment. In many ways, they inspired it.
“For several of those years, besides working in the professional arts world, I also taught and choreographed in the community dance and arts world, where I worked with various populations, such as young teen moms or young women who were incarcerated and in treatment centers, elders in nursing homes, people in recovery, families in foster-care communities, and more,” she explained.
“I focused on art making as a means of making voices heard and bodies seen that aren’t always heard and seen. I became more interested in the lives of those with whom I was dancing, in their nourishment, and when Rachel’s Table had an opening for a director, I felt that I could serve more people with nourishment from a literal as well as figurative perspective.”
“We live in a world where we sometimes we don’t see the ‘other,’ if you will. How do we learn to live to live together in a much bigger society, a much broader world? We don’t know each other’s story until we really know each other’s story.”
With that, she referenced not only why she took on this new career challenge, but how dance and choreography have made her a better administrator and problem solver. And, in some ways, they help explain why she is a Woman of Impact.
To gain more perspective on why Falk has earned this honor, we need to look at all that she has accomplished since taking the helm at Rachel’s Table in 2019. In short, she has taken the agency “to a new level of food rescue for our very needy community,” said Judy Yaffe, vice president of the advisory board for Rachel’s Table, in nominating Falk as a Woman of Impact.
And she has done this through many new initiatives, including:
• A broadening of the agency’s reach; in the past, it has served only Hampden County, but has expanded into Hampshire and Franklin counties;
• A new program called Growing Gardens, an offshoot of the agency’s gleaning program, whereby constituents focus on growing and harvesting their own food;
• A new partnership with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts to pick up food from Big Y stores and other large donors;
• A new, fully refrigerated van that will enable the agency to deliver larger quantities of food throughout the year;
• Steps that have enabled Rachel’s Table to rescue 50% more healthy produce, meat, milk, and prepared foods for the more than 50 agencies it serves;
• Upgrades to the volunteer-management program; and
• A significant increase in the number of grants received by the agency, and in the amounts of those grants, as well as a surge in the number of donors to the program.
In short, Falk has been instrumental in essentially expanding the mission and taking it in new directions, while also modernizing the agency, making it more efficient, and, yes, guiding it through a pandemic that brought challenges that could not have been imagined.
As we examine all this in greater detail, it will become abundantly clear why she’s been named a Woman of Impact for 2022.
Growing Passion
As noted earlier, Falk brings a diverse résumé to the table.
She has a bachelor’s degree from Brown and master of fine arts and Ph.D. degrees from Temple University, and she has put them to work in several different capacities.
Most recently, she served as founding director of the dance program at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in South Hadley, where she created nationally recognized dance programs for more than 400 students, produced more than 15 original and critically acclaimed concerts, and oversaw a national touring company. Prior to that, she was program director of the Trinity Lasban Conseratoire of Music and Dance in London. There, she directed and developed a program in choreography and community-engaged arts-education outreach for the institution, among a host of other duties.
Earlier, Falk served as chair of SEPAC (Special Education Parent Advisory Councils for the Greenfield Public School District and Franklin County Region), a family-advocacy organization that provides resources, support, and advice on policy for families of children with special needs. Before that, the was coordinator of Community Engagement for the Five College Consortium in Amherst.
As she mentioned, these various assignments, which provided in experience in everything from teaching and mentoring to grant writing and new program creation, helped prepare her for, and in many ways inspire her interest in, the position at Rachel’s Table. It also provided perspective on the need to fully understand the plight and the challenges of others in order to effectively serve them.
“We live in a world where we sometimes we don’t see the ‘other,’ if you will,” she explained. “How do we learn to live to live together in a much bigger society, a much broader world? We don’t know each other’s story until we really know each other’s story.”
As she goes about her work, she doesn’t talk much about her experiences with WIC, for many reasons. Stigma is one of them, but a bigger reason is that she received assistance for only a short time and moved on from her food insecurity. Her story, she said, doesn’t really reflect the true hardships of those in need.
A gleaning program is one of many new initiatives launched by Jodi Falk since she took the helm at Rachel’s Table in 2019.
It is those individuals’ stories that should be told, she said, and their needs that should be addressed.
And this is what she’s been doing since she took the helm at Rachel’s Table, an organization now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Over that time, and especially in recent years, it has evolved and become much more of a holistic agency while still “nourishing people with dignity,” as Falk likes to say.
It carries out its broad mission of battling food insecurity and not only distributing food but first rescuing much of it from restaurants, supermarkets, and other venues in a number of ways and through several different initiatives, including:
• A gleaning program, known as Bea’s Harvest, that works with young people and school groups to engage them in the service of collecting excess produce and donating it to agencies that serve the hungry and homeless in Western Mass.;
• Growing Gardens, which provides the Pioneer Valley with direct access to healthy foods by helping local organizations build gardens to grow culturally appropriate food;
• Bountiful Bowls, a gala staged every two years to raise funds for the agency;
• Outrun Hunger, a biennial 5K run/walk and one-mile fun walk that raises funds to “fill the bowls of those in need”;
• A Hunger Awareness Arts Fest, at which issues of local hunger were highlighted by music and dance performances and art exhibits; and
• A Teen Board, which, partially sponsored by a grant from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, aims to alleviate childhood hunger and educate their peers about local hunger and poverty issues, and then involve them in being part of the solution.
While overseeing all of this, Falk guided the agency through the pandemic while also blueprinting the agency’s response to it, a response that included raising more than $95,000 for food in the agency’s Healthy Community Emergency Fund; purchasing and delivering more than 5,000 pounds of meat and potatoes, 3,000 pounds of fluid milk, and much more; participating with a network of partners in the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box program, delivering, at times, more than 140,000 pounds of food a month to families in need; and creating and funding a program to give lunches to first responders in all three counties.
Falk brings to all her work that perspective from being on WIC for a short time, but, far more importantly, decades of experience in leadership, inspiring those she works with to be creative, entrepreneurial, and innovative, and forging the partnerships that are critical to a nonprofit being able to not only carry out its mission, but take it in new and different directions, as Rachel’s Table has.
And she brings even greater emphasis to keeping in mind, always, the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of those most affected by food insecurity.
“This model, which we’ve had for 30 years, helps the planet — food doesn’t go into a landfill; it gets delivered to agencies that support people who are in need,” she explained. “And at the same time, I wanted to make sure that we address, more directly, some of the problems that cause food insecurity.”
She’s done that through initiatives such as the Growing Gardens program, which helps any of those agencies that want to grow their own food in collaboration with those they serve.
“Young kids from Christina’s House are getting their hands dirty in the garden, and they’re making their own salads,” she said, citing the example of the Springfield-based nonprofit that provides services to women and their children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness (and whose leader, Shannon Mumblo, was named a Woman of Impact in 2021).
“To me, that’s a bigger story than how many thousands of pounds of food we can deliver,” Falk said, “because it means there is a dignified approach to food choice, a dignified approach to having a choice about what you want to plant and grow, and we’re helping to teach people — or learn with people, because I think we all teach each other — how to make our own food and not wait for a handout.”
Food for Thought
‘Learning with people.’ That’s something that Falk has been doing throughout her career — and, really, her whole life.
It’s a pattern that has continued at Rachel’s Table, an model that has enabled the agency to expand, evolve, rescue more food, deliver more food, grow food, and, in sum, be much more responsive to agencies serving those in need.
It has enabled Rachel’s Table to do something else as well — to hear those it serves and understand their story and their needs.
That’s what Falk has brought to Rachel’s Table. And her accomplishments, not only there but at other institutions where she has enabled voices to be heard, certainly make her a Woman of Impact.
SPRINGFIELD — Rachel’s Table, (RT), the food rescue and redistribution program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, and the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts (FBWM), are joining forces to fight hunger.
Rachel’s Table, with its 200 volunteer drivers, will transport the food directly from designated grocery stores to the FBWM agencies, filling the gap where agencies lacked transportation or when its volunteers were needed elsewhere.
“We are thrilled to partner with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts to help deliver food to agencies, especially for those who need our transportation,” said Jodi Falk, director of Rachel’s Table. “Transporting healthy food to people instead of it going into landfill is what we have been doing for almost 30 years and being able to use our operations to better serve our neighbors in the Pioneer Valley is a win for everyone. It is the epitome of partnership to fill gaps and support each other’s good work.”
Rachel’s Table’s partnership with The Food Bank began pre-pandemic in Westfield, and has become revitalized during the past several months. Together, RT and The Food Bank are serving seven agencies, with 13 RT volunteer drivers that rescue nutritious food from eight donors in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin Counties. Starting slowly but deliberately, more than 15,000 lbs. of healthy meat, produce and dairy have been delivered since the program began, and there is more to come.
“Our teams (RT and FBWM) met together, it was clear that our services were complementary, and working together, we would positively impact the communities we serve.” said Shirley DelRio, director of Food Operations at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
Currently using volunteer cars, the RT- Food Bank Partnership drivers are servsafe-trained and use freezer blankets and infrared thermometers to ensure food deliveries remain safe. RT was the recipient of a $7,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts that helped purchase 100 blankets and thermometers for this task.
People interested in driving for Rachel’s Table, or who know of food from a local restaurant, bakery or grocery store that is going to waste, please contact Rachel’s Table at www.rachelstablepv.org.
