This year, the Tri-Village Packers have introduced a project with the goal of distributing food to food-insecure students in Upper Arlington and Grandview Heights. Distribution will occur over Thanksgiving break at no cost to recipients.
The Tri-Village Packers is a recently formed group consisting of several organizations, including the Tri-Village Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club of Northwest Columbus, the Tri-Village and Upper Arlington Rotary Clubs, the Upper Arlington Community Foundation, and local government and school districts in Grandview and Upper Arlington. The organization works with the goal of feeding people within the aforementioned communities.
The Thanksgiving food program originated from the Tri-Village Lions Club and garnered support from the other groups that eventually formed the Tri-Village Packers. The mind behind the program was Lion Jane Jarrow, an Upper Arlington resident and co-chair of the food program.
“In August, I threw out this idea of trying to put together a program where we provide food for the kids at Thanksgiving. Everybody at the table said [that] that’s a great idea. What can we do now?” Jarrow said. “There were four of us at the original organizing meeting. From there, it just kind of spread out, and more and more groups have gotten involved.”
Lions Clubs International consists of service groups across the world, including the Tri-Village Lions Club. The Tri-Village Lions reside in Marble Cliff, Grandview Heights, and Upper Arlington and provide purely voluntary labor to help those in need.
“The mission of the Tri-Village Lions for this year and moving into 2024 is feeding the community, body, mind, and spirit,” Leslie Howard, Grandview representative and co-chair of the program, said.
Jarrow concurs that the organization had been emphasizing hunger and food insecurity—the Thanksgiving food program is not their first project regarding the issue.
“We had been thinking about doing projects that had to do with hunger and food insufficiency in the community, and we had done one project this summer,” Jarrow said. “We do an annual pancake breakfast, and this year, for our pancake breakfast, we invited people to buy tickets that were donated to the Heart to Heart food pantry, so that people who use the food pantry could come to the pancake breakfast…So that was the starting point.”
This fixation on mitigating food insecurity came from the realization of how many children in the area are food insecure. The number is higher than is expected by some, considering the general affluence of Upper Arlington.
“I was amazed at the number of food insecure students at both Arlington and Grandview,” Howard said. “You think, ‘well, these are pretty nice school districts,’ but 7% of the Upper Arlington school population is on free lunch and 6% of the Grandview students.”
Howard is far from being alone in this revelation.
“It always surprises people to know that, in Upper Arlington and in Grandview, there are people who are hungry,” Jarrow said. “We want to make sure that people understand that.”
Additionally, the organizers took extra care to protect the anonymity of students participating in the Thanksgiving food program. Participants signed up to receive donations through a form that was sent out to families and that closed on Oct. 20. Food recipients’ identities are unknown to the volunteers, as all communication passes through Kristyn Anderson, executive assistant and student and staff wellbeing liaison at UAHS.
“I have six kids, and there was a time when sometimes we didn’t eat three meals a day, and it’s embarrassing,” Howard said. “So we’re trying really hard…the identities of the people will be only known by the food service coordinators at each school.”
The Tri-Village Packers hope to turn the food program into a frequent event along with other initiatives to feed the community.
“We’re now looking at this as an inaugural project, as this is the first one; there will be others. So we’re hoping that…possibly for spring vacation, we could do the same thing,” Jarrow said. “We’re looking at other kinds of other circumstances in which we can provide lunches…We’re talking about having some of the food that becomes available through this project available to kids when they get to school. If they come to school hungry, there’ll be something there for them.”
The Packers view the Thanksgiving food program as a crucial step in reducing hunger across Upper Arlington.
“I think that hungry kids can’t learn—I’m a teacher. So I really think that I’ve already seen some intangibles, like all these different really good service organizations coming together and intertwining and working together,” Howard said. “Because really, you know, good things happen if you don’t care who’s in charge or who gets credit, and you just do good stuff.”
Contact Kristyn Anderson at [email protected] with questions regarding the program. To contribute financially, visit uacommunityfoundation.com/donate.
