2023-2024 Impact Grant Recipient: Newark Emergency Services for Families
The Organization:
The Mission of Newark Emergency Services for Families, Inc. (NESF) is to stabilize and empower individuals and families in crisis by providing financial assistance, case management, support services, and community resources. With a focus on housing and food insecurities, as well as workforce development, NESF serves as an anchor social service institution that helps residents survive today so that they may thrive tomorrow.
The Challenge:
Since the onset of the coronavirus in March 2020, food insecurities have topped housing insecurities as the number one challenge to stability in the community. In 2023, NESF served 31,422 residents. More than one third of those residents were homeless – 31% living on the street, 35% living in a shelter or transitional housing, and 34% living with family/friends. Since then, their numbers have quadrupled. In addition, in 2020 they served 53 undocumented immigrants, and in 2023 that number had ballooned to 1511.
The Project: NESF Food Security Program
NESF is expanding its Homeless Drop-In Center, which is a component of the Food Security Program, by moving the soup kitchen and dining room into a new space in order to accommodate the vast increase in residents in need of assistance through hot meals, groceries, counseling and case management.
The Grant:
NESF is expanding its meals program into a soup kitchen with a full time cook, case manager and clinical social worker. NESF currently serves approximately 200 hot meals a day with no funding attributed to this service. This is in addition to the groceries distributed from their food pantry. The soup kitchen serves mostly homeless and underemployed individuals. The organization needs to move the current Drop-In Center into a larger space (already obtained) in order to accommodate the growing number of residents seeking our help. In addition to the hot meals through the soup kitchen, the Drop-In Center will provide comprehensive case management and psychosocial assessments and support to help residents formulate and execute a plan to get their lives back on track. A large portion of our grant is targeted to outfit the kitchen with commercial grade appliances.
The Impact:
NESF will expand its Food Security Program by moving the Community Dining Room (soup kitchen) into a new space next door, allowing for additional space to feed more residents, provide workshops, engage in counseling and case management, and store more fresh, healthy groceries for distribution. The space will more than double the size of the current dining area and storage space, thus allowing 40 people for each seating. The impact of this program will be to reduce the number of residents in Essex County who are hungry and suffering from food insecurity and ultimately reduce poverty by assisting residents in removing barriers to employment and self-sufficiency.
