Bag 'em up: Got Lunch! Laconia inspires new program in Belmont

LACONIA — Bob Champlin remembers well the first meeting he had with John Walker and Rev. Paula Gile over 10 years ago, when they first introduced the idea of a summer food delivery program. More than half of the city’s students qualified for free or reduced school meals, which was a strong indication help was needed through the summer, but Champlin, who was superintendent of schools at the time, immediately had doubts.

“It’s not going to be sustainable, how are you going to get the food? I had just met these people and they wanted to take over the food service for the whole district in the summer,” Champlin recalled. The next time they met, Walker and Gile had a fully-fledged business plan, including a map of delivery routes that could service all neighborhoods in the city, and he knew they were serious.

Got Lunch! Laconia launched in summer 2011, and has been providing weekly food deliveries to families of city children every summer since. This summer, they marked the delivery of their 330,000th bag.

Perhaps more impressive is the growing list of copycat programs. There’s now a Got Lunch! in the Inter-Lakes district, the Ashland district, and in Gilford, and, representing the 19th spin-off, one forming to serve Belmont school district families next year.

Got Lunch! was started after a conversation Walker had with Gile, after he read about the preponderance of children whose families survived on such modest income levels that they qualified for government subsidy so the children could eat breakfast and lunch at school. What about the summer months, wouldn’t those families struggle then, too?

Gile, who was then pastor at the Congregational Church of Laconia, had a possible solution. A church she had previously served, in a small town in Vermont, answered that very question through the formation of a volunteer-run program that collected funding to buy food, then made weekly deliveries to families. There was no application process or need test: anyone who lived in the community and had a child in school needed only to ask.

Trish Poliquin, volunteer coordinator for Got Lunch! Laconia, said the demand for such a program remains strong. In recent summers, the program usually grows to about 500 children by the end of August, but this year has been holding steady above that figure — they served 529 last week — for several weeks.

“The need is definitely out there,” Poliquin said.

Fortunately, so is the community’s capacity to help.

Poliquin said it costs about $175 per child, per summer, in food costs. Most of the food is purchased through the NH Food Bank, though Got Lunch! supplements that through partnerships with local grocery stores and farms. More recently, the bags of food have been augmented with age-appropriate books and with toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Funding comes primarily through business contributions and individual donations. Got Lunch! Laconia was helped for multiple years by grants from the Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction, but lately that hasn’t been necessary, thanks to the generosity of donors giving directly to the program.

Similarly robust has been volunteer support. Poliquin said it takes about 120 volunteers, who start setting up in the Congregational Church basement over the weekend. Then early on Monday mornings, working on both sides of folding tables piled with food items, volunteers pack hundreds of bags, which are then loaded into the trunks and hatches of vehicles, which drop them on doorsteps throughout the city.

A significant portion of the volunteers are employees by the city’s schools, people who know well the level of need among the city’s children.

Jen Connelly, who teaches first grade at Woodland Heights Elementary School, has been volunteering for Got Lunch! for several years. She has helped make deliveries in the past, but on the morning of Aug. 14, she was helping to pack bags in the church basement.

“I think it’s an amazing program. It’s like a well-oiled machine. It’s great that kids and families can rely on this program in the summer,” Connelly said.

Connelly said she also enjoys the “happy and welcoming” crowd that forms each Monday morning. Poliquin that’s something that also keeps her coming back.

“Just seeing the collaboration, the team work, the support; it’s a community feel,” Poliquin said. “That’s the best, seeing everybody coming together, working together with a common purpose, it’s been very exciting to see. What a great town we have, that’s for sure.”

Spreading to Belmont

There have been distinct seasons to Sandee Diller’s life. When she was newly married, she said she and her husband set out to start a stable life together. Then their plan fell apart.

“We bought a house, and within three months, both my husband and I lost our jobs. We ended up losing everything,” she said. While that was a dark and difficult time of her life, she now says it helped to create the person she is today. She has learned not to place too much value in material things, instead focusing on experiences and time spent with others. She also learned that, when times are hard, moments of generosity shine bright. There wasn’t an organized effort, such as Got Lunch!, in her town at that time, but there would still be mornings when the Dillers would find bags of groceries left at their door, presumably by neighbors who knew their situation.

“Going through times like that made me realize that I wanted to show people that what you’re going through doesn’t define who you are. It makes you stronger, and now I can help others who are in the same situation,” Diller said.

She and her husband left New England and found stability in Phoenix, but last year decided to head back East. They traded a city of nearly 5 million for Belmont, which has about 7,000 people. She was just getting to know her new community when she saw a neighborhood social media post asking if there was a Got Lunch! in their town. Soon she was having breakfast with Sharon Ciampi, a member of the town selectboard, and they’ve since been plotting to start Got Lunch! Belmont, with a goal of launching for summer 2024.

“It seems to me that a lot of people feel that we need a program in this town,” said Ciampi, noting that more than 300 children in the Shaker School District, which includes Belmont and Canterbury, qualify for free or reduced school meals. “It’s a significant number of kids in the district.”

Ciampi and Diller, as well as others on the Belmont committee, have been volunteering with Laconia’s program to see how they do it, and are beginning to fit the pieces together so that next summer, Belmont families who need it can get a weekly delivery of food to their door.

The Belmont program’s biggest need right now is to assemble a list of volunteers. Interested people can call Diller at 602-820-3026, or connect via the Facebook page for “Got Lunch Belmont & Friends.”

“Personally, I just see the need,” said Ciampi. “And I want to do good things in my community. And, you hope that by volunteering for things, that other people will see that and say, 'I want to volunteer, too.'”