Lowell — When she was principal at Cherry Creek Elementary, Shelli Otten visited a student’s home and realized he had no bed of his own and slept on a couch every night.
“The student was falling asleep a lot at school,” Otten recalled. “We asked: What can we do to make sure he had a more consistent sleep schedule?”
She reached out to Flat River Outreach Ministries, and the organization connected the child and his family with not only a bed, but food and clothing as well.
During her 12 years as principal, Otten and her staff utilized FROM for many other resources as well, from winter gear to school supplies to meals for families.
The food pantry, thrift store and resource connector, 11535 Fulton St. E., continues to serve as a major source of assistance for Lowell Area Schools. Otten herself is now a connector between the district and the organization. Families living within the 134 square-mile district utilize its services.
“This was the place we went to when we had needs for students,” she said. “They were the people we called when we said, ‘Hey, there’s a family that could really benefit from their services. .. It’s a great feeling when you have a community partner that you know is standing side-by-side with you.”
When Otten retired in 2020, FROM representatives asked her to join the board of directors. She enthusiastically agreed, and began working in programming, focused on initiatives that benefit students. Now she’s chair of the 13-member board.
From Humble Beginnings
The 26-year-old organization began in the basement of Lowell United Methodist Church, said Arianne Hall, FROM development director. Thirteen churches came together, identifying food insecurity as an issue in the community and working to bring food to families who need it.
“The barrier driving just from Lowell to downtown Grand Rapids was posing quite a challenge,” Hall recalled. “We wanted to meet those basic needs: making sure you had food in your belly (and) that you were able to keep a roof over your head.”
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FROM has grown from serving a handful of families in 1998 to more than 1,000 households through more than a dozen programs. Key partnerships with the school district include the annual August backpack distribution, which gears up about 300 students with backpacks filled with school supplies; and a Christmas distribution for families to have toys under the tree and food on their plates.
Helping things run smoothly, student volunteers often work in the thrift store, or come in groups — like the wrestling or football teams — to stock shelves and organize items.
Lowell Middle School teacher Missy Baker’s six students in the cognitively impaired program are spending an hour each Thursday morning sorting, counting and pricing items for the thrift shop.
“We are helping others that are in need. It feels good to be helping others,” said eighth-grader Chloe Vaughn.
Baker said the volunteering opportunity helps students and families become aware of FROM.
“This is where we live. This is the community we travel, work and play in and we want to help the community around us because sometime they will help us,” Baker said.
The time spent at FROM is also giving students valuable experience that could lead to future jobs, and the desire to continue giving back, Baker said.
“I want them to be lifelong volunteers,” she said.
‘It’s a great feeling when you have a community partner that you know is standing side-by-side with you.’
— Shelli Otten, Flat River Outreach Ministries co-chair and former elementary principal
Tackling Increased Food Insecurity
The backpack distribution recently wrapped up, and Otten is already looking ahead to next spring’s community- and district-wide Food Fight drive. Both offer teachable moments for students, who learn the impact of giving and coming together.
During Food Fight, schools host drives at every building in competition with one another. Businesses also participate. Of 12,000 food items collected last year, about 9,000 came from LAS. The event also raised $140,000 in contributions last spring.
“We try to impress on the kids the fact that if everybody brought in a can of food at the end of May, those items were used by the beginning of July,” Otten said. “They were gone. There’s a need.”
FROM’s food pantry offers healthy and nutritious foods and is open three days a week, serving produce, meat and other fresh options. Hall said food insecurity is a growing need in the community, which led them to increase allowed shopping trips from once to twice a month for families.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we identified that the need was (increasing), and food wasn’t lasting families long enough,” she said. “We have seen, especially in the last year, the number of people utilizing that second trip going up substantially.”
Numbers have doubled in the last two years, from 1,300 shopping trips in 2021 to 2,700 last year.
“We are all feeling it, with inflation and trying to feed families and keep up with the price of vegetables — especially when you have little ones,” Hall said.
Otten’s seen the effect having basic needs met has on students’ well-being.
“Knowing the impact the organization made with the kids and families I saw really helped put kids on a level playing field with peers. They could come to school and have what they needed, and we knew that at-home needs were able to be met in many ways.”
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