Hi!  My name is Owen Pollack and I am the Westerville Area Resource Ministry (W.A.R.M.) Summer Fellow.  My primary responsibility is to serve as a leader of one Lunch Club site, maintaining and improving the standards, attendance, and positive relationships with participants and the site owner.  Truthfully, I was not quite certain what to expect in beginning my work with W.A.R.M., which has turned out to be a good thing since each day brings new and different occurrences!

Last year was the first year that W.A.R.M. was a USDA-approved Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) site.  The objective of the program is to provide children, especially those who receive free and reduced-price lunches during the school year, with a free, nutritious lunch during the summer.  W.A.R.M. served meals and offered recreational and sports activities in one Westerville area park in 2011.This year, the program expanded to three parks and one apartment complex in the Westerville City school district.  Until the start of my work, I did not realize how much marketing and publicity launching three new sites would entail.  We also found out some exciting news…W.A.R.M. was selected as one of the SFSP sites that will be providing weekend backpack meals thanks to the Governor’s initiative.  We will even receive a visit from the Governor and his staff at one of the sites at the end of this week.

My first week involved a lot of networking within the community, talking to individuals and community members in the surrounding areas of the lunch sites, producing signs and flyers to advertise the program, and even preparing press releases.  Over the course of my time at W.A.R.M., I will be focusing on creating a video of interviews from families, volunteers, and other supporters of the Westerville Area Kids Lunch Club; composing a business model to share with Trinity Health to potentially expand the lunch program to other cities and states; partnering with other Westerville area backpack programs through local churches and individuals to hopefully continue providing weekend meals for children during the school year; and overseeing operations at each meal site.  Fingers crossed that I will have a photograph to document the affair in my next post!