The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
The Heartfelt Struggle Against Food Insecurity in Minnesota
As Spring fades into summer in Minnesota, the warmth of human kindness remains steadfast, a theme we unravel with Susan Diersen, executive director of NACE (North Anoka County Emergency Food Shelf). Our discussion peels back the veneer on food insecurity, revealing a shifting landscape where inflation pushes even the helpers into the queue for aid. Susan illuminates the uplifting efforts of NACE, not just in filling plates, but also in fulfilling birthday wishes and clothing those in the cold. It's an episode where compassion meets action, and you'll discover how your financial support can stretch further than you ever imagined, transforming lives one dollar at a time.
Amidst the narratives of crises and need, there's a thread of hope woven by the hands of Second Harvest Heartland and their community-specific endeavors. From personalized birthday bags that bring joy to children, to the emergency sustenance of crisis and weekend packs, we explore the power of community efforts in addressing hunger head-on. This episode is a testament to the collective spirit that thrives when we look beyond our own needs and extend a hand—whether it's through a simple compliment or concerted charity work. Join us as we celebrate the unsung stories of kindness and the everyday heroes making a tangible difference.
The Kindness Matters Podcast is part of the DEN-The Deluxe Edition Network. Check them out to find your next favorite podcast.
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This podcast is part of the Deluxe Edition Network. To find other great shows on the network, head over to DeluxeEditionNetworkcom. That's.
Speaker 2:DeluxeEditionNetworkcom. Kindness we see it all around us. We see it when someone pays for someone else's coffee or holds the door open for another person. We see it in the smallest of gestures, like a smile or a kind word. But it's different when we turn on the news or social media. Oftentimes, what we hear about what outlets are pushing is the opposite of kind.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Kindness Matters Podcast. Our goal is to give you a place to relax, to revel in stories of people who have received or given kindness, a place to inspire and motivate each and every one of us to practice kindness every day. Well, hello there and welcome everybody to the Kindness Matters podcast. I am your host, mike Rathbun. As you noticed at the beginning, I am a part of the Deluxe Edition Network, a collection of amazing podcasts, and this month, the month of June, you can listen to one of my favorite podcasts, the Hilf Podcast.
Speaker 2:Comedian and historian Don Brody takes you through the annals of history with a special guest and history subject. Each episode, from Dillinger to Frankenstein, from the Crusades to freak shows, don brings her history degree and unfiltered sense of humor to deliver well-researched, deep dives that strip history naked and serve it up raw. Also, check out the show notes for this episode and every episode really, where you'll find links and discount codes for two companies that I really like a lot Sunday Scaries and Coffee Bros. And now on with the show. Hey, hello everybody and welcome. I have the most fantastic guest for you today. She is a butterfly, bird and bee sanctuary owner, a lavender farmer, a writer, a speaker, a coach, but, most importantly, for today's episode of the Kindness Matters podcast episode of the Kindness Matters podcast, susan Dearson is the executive director of NACE, or, more formally, the North Anoka County Emergency Food Shelter. Welcome to the show, susan. How are you?
Speaker 1:Great, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so good. Thank you so much. I know you've been dealing with some stuff lately and I really appreciate the fact that that you could take some time and be with me today, because talking about what NACE helps to address food insecurity Is that. Is that too boiled down for what you guys do?
Speaker 1:that's basically our number one mission.
Speaker 2:We also help people with clothing and we also do toys for birthday kids, but the main thing we're doing is food, yeah I saw a stat um it might have been from Second Harvest Heartland the other day that in 2023, 7.5 million Minnesotans visited food shelves.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:It is, and it's a huge increase from previous years, primarily due to our inflation situation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, and you know we can go round and round and everybody has probably their own favorite theory as to why food is so much more expensive these days, to why food is so much more expensive these days, but that really doesn't change. You know, the fact that it is more expensive, right? And people are struggling more than ever to be able to afford it.
Speaker 1:Correct. What we've seen is a change in our clientele to we now have a large number of who I would consider lower middle class people. They're people who've never gone to a food shelf. Before Some of them have been people who've donated to the food shelf, but now, with the rise in the cost of the food and also insurance has gone way up for auto and home insurance.
Speaker 2:Everything.
Speaker 1:And health care has gone up. I know my co-pay now is 50 bucks. It used to be 35. So we're seeing these lower middle class folks coming. They're coming for their first time. They're very humble and sometimes they're embarrassed and sometimes they're just really thankful. But when I see that that's the main reason why I say it's because of inflation, because they say I have to pay for all these other things and then I don't have enough to buy the food that's so expensive. So they come to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then you look at all the weird wacky weather that we've been having lately and you hear about states like California and Florida where insurance companies are pulling out because they can't afford to insure. Right, and you can't help but think it's just going to get worse, right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, worse, right, right, yeah, um, and now talk to me. You guys, you take in, you take food donations, right, but the biggest impact for you guys is is financial right, correct, because what I can bring in is like doubled or tripled what you guys could do with 50 bucks.
Speaker 1:Right. So with a dollar of food we can buy about eight pounds of fruit, which obviously is a lot more than buying a macaroni and cheese for a dollar. But we still do really appreciate when people do food drives for us. It's still obviously very helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't mean to say you know that don't bother donating, because absolutely, I know our cleaning company had a food drive in April and a bunch of stuff up to you guys. Thank you, I didn't you guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I didn't know that. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, clothes also.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Because you do have that. Do you call it a clothing closet?
Speaker 1:We call it the clothing closet.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And we give out between 3,000 and 4,000 clothing items a month.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a lot more than I would have thought.
Speaker 1:We go through a lot of clothes, a lot of clothes get donated and a lot of clothes get given out.
Speaker 2:So for any of my listeners, if you're thinking about donating some clothes that you have good, you know, gently used clothes to goodwill or something like that, check with your food shelf first and see if they take because yeah, and and we don't, and we don't charge for it, like goodwill, so the clients just come and they shop and they don't have to pay. Yeah because and that's a huge thing now is is that something that just you guys do, or do other food shelves do that too?
Speaker 1:before I start sending people off to food shelves ACPC and Anoka has a clothing closet. They do charge at theirs, but it's not very much.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's a nominal amount. Okay, yeah, and this is because you guys, you kind of alluded to it, but you're more than just a food shelf. Right, you have so many programs and it's just amazing. I was glancing through you have, I didn't notice, I didn't notice the acronym Nutrition Assistance Program for Seniors, which is Right.
Speaker 1:NAPS yes.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things.
Speaker 1:The NAPS program is actually a government program and so basically people sign up through Second Harvest to get what's as a NAPS box and a thing of cheese, and Second Harvest sends us those boxes every month and then the people that are on that program come and pick up their boxes. So that's our easiest program to administer, because all we do is hand them out.
Speaker 2:Right, right Now. What is the relationship with Second Harvest? I always thought that they were a food shelf, but I think they're more than that, are they not? Yeah?
Speaker 1:they're actually what's called a food bank and we're what's called a food shelf. So a food bank is an organization, usually non-profit, that supplies food to food shelves, so we're a partner with them registered partner and what that means is, every Monday, we go in online and we order food from them that we need, and that's where we buy all of our food the food we have to buy and we're buying it at a very reduced rate rather than buying it retail.
Speaker 2:So you do a little inventory of your stock there and you go, okay, we could really use this, this, this and this exactly. Yeah, okay, all right now are the is. We will be right back with more of my conversation with susan dearson right after these messages from another fantastic deluxe edition network podcast hey, there it's the barrel age chicks.
Speaker 1:I'm sammy'm Sammy, I'm Snow, I'm Crystal, often called Moused.
Speaker 2:And I'm here too, and then we also have Yen and Harley who sadly are not with us, but that's okay. We're here to talk to you about our podcast. Tune in because it's just, it's a lot of fun and you get to hear the chick side of things. You get to BS about movies and drinking and life and momming. Lots of laughing.
Speaker 1:Lots of laughing, I laugh.
Speaker 2:But it's great. Yes, we have finished our first season.
Speaker 1:And we're starting our second season. Good Lord 2024. Here we come, I know.
Speaker 2:Enjoy it, join us on all of the platforms. Hear them talk and me listen you talk. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook Pretty much anywhere you can hear voices on the phone and yeah, so give us a follow, check us out, watch us give Ron aneurysms. That's the best part, and thanks for listening. We will talk to you soon. The name would imply that they service more than just Minnesota. Is that correct or no? Am I reading it?
Speaker 1:I believe there's second harvest in multiple states, but each is kind of managed on its own. So, like the second harvest we go through is the one that's located in Brooklyn Park or Brooklyn Center, but then, like the Princeton food shelf gets from Second Harvest North and we get from Second Harvest Heartland. So, there's a lot of different Second Harvest that's basically based off a geographical area.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, so talk to me about some of your other Okay, you mentioned it earlier the birthday gift bags, okay, you mentioned it earlier, the birthday gift bags.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So what that is is we have this big walk-in closet full of things for kids. So if a child, if a parent comes and says their child has a birthday that month, we ask them you know how old are they, are they boy or girl? What are their interests? Because you can't assume, you know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I always my staff was like why do we have to ask? I said you can't assume, because it's a boy, because I know a boy, that if you gave him a football he'd be like I don't want this, I want craft supplies. So yeah, we asked them what they like and they get. They all get a book and they get a craft packet. So it's like a bag with markers.
Speaker 1:Depending on the age it's different If it's a little kid it's coloring book, markers, they might have glue, they might have paper they can cut. So anyway, they get like an art kit. And then they get some gifts, some toys from us, and then they also the parent gets a cake cake, a cake mix, frosting candles cake, a cake mix, frosting candles and paper products that they can serve the cake plates and napkins.
Speaker 1:And what have you, yeah, okay, and we ask them, like if you like a certain thing, like if they like paw patrol, we might have paw patrol ones. If they like tractors, we might have tractors. We try to really make it perfect, because we know that it could be that this is all they're going to get for their birthday. It's what we're doing them, so we try really hard to tailor it and to give them some nice gifts.
Speaker 2:Cool, and then you also do my gosh. There's so much here Now. Do you take donations for the birthday stuff or no?
Speaker 1:Yes, we do, but we do ask that it is new. Yeah, we don't give out used toys, so we ask that it is new. But yes, we definitely take donations for that program.
Speaker 2:Just like Toys for Joy or the. Christmas ones. You got to do yeah.
Speaker 1:And actually we just started a partnership with Toys for Joy because they changed their mission. Their mission used to be to give away gifts at the holiday time. Yeah, and they changed their mission to have it be year-round, so they are giving us some toys. Well, what they're doing right now is they're storing them for us because we don't have room for them, but anyway. So we have a partnership that we're getting toys from Toys for Joy, which is really great. It's fun when the different nonprofits can work together. Yes, yes, it's really great.
Speaker 2:It's fun when the different nonprofits can work together. Yes, yes, that's so cool. I love that. How about another one Holiday meal packs? You guys do that yeah.
Speaker 1:So we do Thanksgiving and Christmas right now. We may add Easter at some point, but basically at Thanksgiving there's a company called DSTI, or maybe it's DTSI, I never remember. They're in Andover.
Speaker 1:Andover right, yeah, they give us 50 boxes. They do them for us and then we do about 50 ourselves, and basically at Thanksgiving they get a turkey stuffing, pumpkin pie, some sort of roll, dinner roll, a few vegetables, and then we get the 50 from the company and then our Savior's Lutheran Church confirmation kids make us 10 to 20, and then we make whatever else we need. And then at Christmas it's basically the same thing, but we do hams and we don't have a big corporate partner, which I'm hoping to find. So usually Connexus donates us $5,000 for Christmas to help with the boxes.
Speaker 2:But not anymore. No, I don't want to put anybody on the spot, no, okay.
Speaker 1:Connexus. They have already told me they're doing it again this year.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, woo, Yep, whew, yes, way to go. Connexus, yeah, and tell me about, okay, crisis packs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the crisis packs used to be a really big program. We used to have these packs at all the local churches and basically it would be so if someone came to the church asking for food, they could give them one of these boxes.
Speaker 1:Right now, we only have two churches that are doing it, because most of the churches have changed to giving out gift cards, but yeah, so now we have two churches that do it, but basically we provide these boxes that have food in it. That will be stuff they can use right away because they're in crisis. Okay, oh, wow, so, oh wow, and so then the church just calls us when they're out of boxes and we make more and bring them on over to them.
Speaker 2:So, and these packs, when you say crisis, this allows individuals access to food to get them through a night or a weekend or whatever. Right, yep, okay, yeah, literal crisis.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. And then they tell them to come see us to get more food.
Speaker 2:Sure, and then you have weekend packs.
Speaker 1:Yes, the weekend pack program is basically we're providing food to children that are dependent on school lunch for their meals during the school year. They often don't have food when they go home on the weekends, or there's food but they don't have parents home to make it. So we give the kids a backpack of food, of things they can make themselves and things that kids like, and we actually do 250 of those a week. So we're doing a thousand of those a month, holy buckets.
Speaker 1:It's amazing to think that there's 250 kids in our school district that their parents have signed them up because they feel that they need this.
Speaker 2:Wow, that their parents have signed them up because they feel that they need this, Wow.
Speaker 1:And then in the summer, when they don't have school, their parents can come and pick up summer boxes. So they get a box of similar food and it's usually enough for a month, and then they can come back the next month to get another box.
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah, like Capri, Sun and Pringles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like we get like the mac and cheese, that's just in a cup and you just put the whole thing into the microwave Stuff that the kids can do themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Now you also do something home delivery, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what home delivery is is it's for any family or individual that has no means to get to us. Most of the folks on the program are seniors that no longer drive and we have a few disabled folks that don't drive. Anyway, we do 80 deliveries a month.
Speaker 2:Ooh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:When I first came in 2020, we did 15. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my goodness. Yeah, and the need has increased and I would imagine so also has the. That's so cool. So when you think of a food shelf, you just think of people go and they get food and you don't maybe realize just how much you guys do for the community and of course you'd be nowhere without your volunteers, right.
Speaker 1:Right, we have over 100 volunteers. You know that saying there's always one Like there's always one bad one, we joke. My staff and I joke because there isn't one. There's not one I think of a single volunteer. That is a problem. I mean, we always go, there's always one, and then we jokingly go, but there's not.
Speaker 2:But there's not, they're all amazing.
Speaker 1:They're all amazing. We just have amazing volunteers. They're very committed, they're well-trained, they know what to do. It's really smooth and nice. We have volunteers that work in the clothing closet, that do distribution. We have the home delivery people. We have volunteers who drive to the stores that give us food. They're called our food rescue partner, so we have those. So basically, we have food sorters, food distributors, food packers and drivers. Distributors, food packers and drivers.
Speaker 2:Wow and you know, I can say, because I've been there a couple times, there's not an unhappy person in your entire staff, my staff is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:My staff is. I mean the volunteers and the staff. It's like if someone asks me why I love my job, I actually don't first say I get to give food to people. My first response is I love my staff and my volunteers.
Speaker 2:And then, oh, plus that I get to give out food to people, the cherry on the yeah, the icing on the cake is that there's such a huge need, and it's too bad that there's such a need, right? But thank goodness, you and your staff of volunteers are there and you're doing so much good for our community, and I can speak on behalf of the entire community when I say thank you for everything that you do, sure.
Speaker 1:We love it. It's very rewarding and it needs to be done and I'm just thankful every day that I can help people and my staff can help people and the volunteers can help people. It's just a blessing to be able to have that be your job. My job is to go help people today. What a great job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well, susan, thank you so much for for taking the time to be with me. I really do appreciate it. I appreciate you and what you guys do and, um, yeah, keep on, keep on, keeping on I will.
Speaker 1:I will. Thanks for having me, mike.
Speaker 2:You're so very, very welcome. Thank you. So much fun to talk to Susan Dearson, Executive Director of NACE North Anoka County Emergency Food Shelf. You know this whole podcast. I started to highlight people and organizations that are making the world, or at least their part of the world, a little better place, and I congratulate all of the non-profits that I've talked to, nace included, because I think they're doing good work. The volunteers are doing amazing work and you know, as we saw in this episode, a food shelf isn't necessarily just a food shelf. It could also be a place to, if you can't afford a lot of things, get your child a birthday pack.
Speaker 2:I am constantly inspired and motivated by the people that I talk to on this show and I hope that, in some small way, you, the listener, are too. You're amazing for showing up every week and listening to this podcast and I thank you for that. Your selfless gift to me, to this podcast, of your time, is so much appreciated. I really do. Thank you for showing up for this podcast and let's keep it going. Okay, let's keep talking about the good things in the world, the good things that are happening that don't get shown on social media or the news, local or national all the time. Let's make this the norm, okay?
Speaker 2:Okay, climbing down off my soapbox now, that will do it for this episode of the Kindness Matters podcast. We will be back again next week and until then, be that person who roots for others. And until then, be that person who roots for others, who tells a stranger they look amazing and encourages others to believe in themselves and their dreams. You've been listening to the Kindness Matters Podcast. I'm your host, mike Rathbun. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, instagram, tiktok. We're out there and we're waiting for you. Until we meet again, have a fantastic week.
