About four or five years ago, a teacher at Tantramar Regional High School noticed one of his students didn’t have a winter jacket. It was January, and luckily the teacher, Matthew Tozer, had access to some jackets that had been left behind by kids in previous years. But when Tozer got home and told his partner and fellow teacher Melanie Ball about the situation, the two agreed something had to be done.
“He came home and said, this is terrible. How can you focus on school, and figuring out what you want to do for your future, if you’re worried about freezing to death on the way here?” recalls Ball. “And I agreed he was absolutely right.”
And so the TRHS Pantry project was born. Tozer and Ball put together a closet at the school with, “some of the basic things that we thought the students might need that they didn’t have,” says Ball.
But other needs soon became apparent. “Then we realized that some of the kids didn’t have lunches,” says Ball. “So we started a lunch program as well with the help of the Sackville Food Bank and Heather Patterson.”
“It just kept getting bigger,” says Ball. “Our principal gave us a bigger room. Once you start doing this sort of thing you really see the need. And so it’s just been growing and growing every year,” says Ball.
Hear Melanie Ball in conversation on Tantramar Report:
The pantry stocks clothing, food, and personal care items like toothbrushes, toothpaste and shampoo. Any teacher can give a student access to the pantry to stock up on supplies.
“Every student is in a different position in terms of what they need,” says Ball, and even in terms of how long they might need help. “Sometimes a student will use us once, and that’s it. Just to get them through a rough patch. Sometimes we have students living on their own, and we help them with a lot more more things. We try to be as flexible as possible.”
While school is closed for the summer, so is the pantry, and so Ball directs students to the Sackville Food Bank for assistance in July and August.
Ball says she applies for grants to help keep the pantry stocked, and has received funding from the town of Sackville and other organizations. There’s also ongoing support from the Sackville Food Bank. And every year, Ball asks the community for donations. There’s often donations of things like coats and outer winter wear, says Ball.
“It’s definitely something that can’t be successful without a close knit community,” says Ball. “And that’s sort of what Sackville has.”
This year, Ball put out a request through former TRHS parent Natalie Crossman in search of a fridge for the pantry.
“The biggest need that I saw this year was for fresh food,” says Ball. “Healthy foods, not packaged, processed food, which we have a little bit more of.” Through Crossman’s outreach, a fridge has been secured for the pantry, so that in the fall it can stock things like milk, cheese, butter, fruits, and vegetables.
“And so we’ll be reaching out to members of the community again in August to start thinking about things that we can get for that,” says Ball. There’s already some local farmers lined up to donate some fresh fruits and vegetables, she says.
Ball says she’s hoping the pantry will hit the ground running in the fall, so that students can make use of it right away, if needed. “So that they can focus on school and thinking about their future. Not so necessarily tied up with just surviving in the present.”
The pantry will be ready to start taking donations again on August 30.