Page 46 - BusinessWest October 31, 2022

Falk
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• 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
Roqué
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dignity they deserve.
“I don’t do unto others as was done unto me,” she
said. “I see everyone, and when I see them, I don’t see color or race — I see people as human beings, and I try to instill that in the younger generations; I tell them to pass on the love, not the hate, and treat others the way you would like to be treated.
“I try to be an example to others, especially women, who feel that maybe they didn’t have value or are not being heard,” she went on. “That’s what I’m trying to do with my voice; I’m trying to be someone in this community who is respectable and who respects, and who likes to be heard.”
When asked to assess what has changed and improved since she arrived and the work still to
be done, Roqué said there has been considerable progress, and she points to City Hall as just one example. There, Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Puerto Rican mayor, sits in the corner office.
Raymaakers
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her that she needed to take a job that offered health insurance.
“This was a case of ‘when one door closes, another opens,’” she said, adding that the former director
of the Westfield Boys & Girls Club, whom she
worked with and for, had taken the same position in Springfield, and he hired her to manage three satellite offices — and provide more mentoring and counseling to young people.
“These were rough neighborhoods; there were a lot of gangs,” she recalled. “And I tried to convince them that they didn’t have to do it this way, with the street life, the gangs — I said, ‘you have opportunities out there. You don’t have to be a follower; you can be a leader.’”
a venture that has grown over the years to now boast 41 employees. The ‘& Sons’ part of the title
46 OCTOBER 31, 2022
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
“I see everyone, and when I see them, I don’t see color or race — I see people as human beings, and I try to instill that in the younger generations; I tell them to pass on the love, not the hate, and treat others the way you would like to be treated.
came later, as sons John and Joshua, who first started helping out when they were 12, officially joined the company.
While the company has enjoyed steady growth over the years, success has not come easily, and Raymaakers remembers many years when she — and John — would work at least two jobs.
“I worked at the Westfield Police Department for five years, 4 to midnight, as a police dispatcher,” she recalled. “It was exhausting; I’d get up at 6 in the morning and get the kids off to school, and then I’d do company work, and then I’d have to go to work again.
“At night, the boys used to plow,” she went on. “And then they’d come to the police station at night and switch vehicles with me; I would go out and plow all night, and they’d take my car home.”
When asked what she does day in and day out at
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. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
“For a lot of years, Holyoke did not reflect the community that lives here,” she said. “Things have been getting progressively better, but there is still a lot more to do when it comes to navigating through systemic challenges. There’s still work to be done and a lot of effort needed to come together as one community.”
Bottom Line
Roqué will certainly be putting in that effort.
As she has said, and others have said of her, the work she does at Nuestras Raíces is not really work. It is, indeed a passion.
Specifically, a passion to serve, to educate, to inspire, to create opportunities, and to change lives. She does all of that, and that’s why she’s always been a leader and a Woman of Impact. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
been rewarding ... it’s been frightening,” she said. “But there’s nothing else I’d rather do. Growth doesn’t come easy — it comes at a cost; you have to be willing to pay that cost.”
Concrete Example
Raymaakers recalls a time she visited a job site about eight years ago, with the intention of getting her hands dirty — literally.
“I went to pick up a wheelbarrow of asphalt to patch, just ’cause I wanted to, and I couldn’t pick it up,” she said with exasperation in her voice all these years later. “I was so ticked off ... I’m like, ‘I’m out of shape!’”
It was one of the few times over the past four decades when she couldn’t say ‘I can do that.’
Because she was able to say it all those other
”
She worked at the club from 2 to 10, which gave her the opportunity to work at SealMaster before that, she said, adding that, over the years, she would work several different jobs to help make ends meet.
J.L. Raymaakers, she laughed, as if to indicate that
Women of In 1998, she and John started J.L. Raymaakers, Women of IMPACT
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specializing in paving and site work, crack-filling at Summing up what it’s been like for her — and for all places like the Holyoke Mall, snowplowing, and more, business owners, for that matter — she put things in
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
BusinessWest
there is little she doesn’t do. The list includes project times, she’s been not only a force in the workplace —
management, estimating, marketing, and many other whatever that might be — but a force in the lives of
assignments. those around her, a true Woman of Impact.u
perspective in poignant fashion.
“It’s been a challenge ... it’s been a struggle ... it’s
A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST Women of Women of IMPACT
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A PROGRAM OF BUSINESSWEST