For two years, Shorewood’s public alternative high-school program, New Horizons, has partnered with Kinship Community Food Center —a food center focused on serving community members quality food, whether it’s giving them a hot meal or providing fresh produce from their urban farm. The two entities partnered to collect food from Shorewood families, redistributing the collected goods around the Milwaukee area.
“Kinship Community Food Center, or Kinship as a whole, is a nonprofit organization that uses food as an entry point to build community,” said Elizabeth O’Hotzke, Kinship’s Food Operations Associate. “We have many programs that do that, including our food center, our free market that is always open twice a week. [We provide hot meals]. We have an urban farm where we grow over 20,000 pounds of organic food that is distributed in this very space.”
Kinship also has a garden, cafe, and catering to support the operation. Many members of the Shorewood community use these different outlets to give back to the community, including Julia Crysdale, sophomore.
“I’ve volunteered at their community food center, their urban farm, and for the past two years at their food drive that they organize at the school,” said Crysdale. “The other volunteers were all really eager to help and just really kind people.”
Since Kinship prioritizes fostering relationships and opportunities within the community, and isn’t set up like a traditional food pantry, there is a lot more interconnectedness between volunteers and those receiving food.
“A lot of the people who volunteer there also have the cards so they can receive the food as well,” said Crysdale. “There really isn’t that much of a difference between the people giving the food and receiving the food.”
Run and taught by French teacher Lisa McFarland, New Horizons operates through a variety of projects and partnerships with community organizations. Under the tagline “no walls, no ceilings, no boundaries,” New Horizons engages in a variety of volunteer work to achieve educational progress.
“We focus more on work outside in the community, making connections first with one another in the classroom, to build relationships so we are able to function outside of school and provide help to the community,” said McFarland. “It’s really finding those key moments where a student is able to show their proficiency in a nontraditional way.”
The New Horizons–Kinship partnership began two years ago, with McFarland taking her advisory to Kinship Urban Farm to volunteer regularly. Over the last two years, New Horizons has put on a school assembly and arranged a food drive for the whole school, raising an average of 3,600 pounds of supplies.
“Connecting with Kinship, I wanted to bring something to our school where it would give everyone the opportunity to volunteer, not just New Horizons, because I know the benefit of it,” McFarland said.
This year alone, the food drive collected 4,000 pounds of food. Nonetheless, New Horizons has plans to expand their reach on the issue in the years to come. O’Hotzke believes that the New Horizons students contributed greatly to the Center’s operations.
“We have a group of them that [help out] every week,” O’Hotzke said. “I throw a lot of random produce at them. It’s all donated, some of it’s good, some of it’s not. They’re putting it on the shelf making it look like a grocery store. We’ve got people running in nonperishables and making those carts look good. We have the loading team, which really runs itself now; they know what to do. These students have really stepped up and taken ownership of this space.”
While many students opt to volunteer within the traditional opportunities Kinship has to offer, the new opportunity offered by New Horizons allowed students to contribute in a new way while being led by their peers.
“I got to work with the New Horizons students and they all were really kind and really dedicated because we were walking,” Crysdale said. “We were putting bags all around town on foot. And this year, I worked a little bit with the New Horizons students, but this year I was working on picking up the bags. Whereas last year I was putting the bags on the doors for the food drive.”
The connection between New Horizons, other Shorewood Students, and Kinship has partnership while sharing a message with those who their work impacts.
“Our philosophies really fit well together,” McFarland said. “It’s a community of generosity. One of their volunteers … has always said we meet people wherever they are, regardless of where they are. That never changes, so it’s always an open arms to whoever comes in, and that’s how I think in New Horizons too. It’s acknowledging that everyone is valuable.”