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Gang Free gets a makeover

The Daily Dispatch - 9/6/2017

Sept. 06--The old building housing local nonprofit organization Gang Free Inc. is getting some much-needed upgrades this week as part of Food Lion's third annual "The Great Pantry Makeover" campaign.

On Tuesday, associates from the four Henderson Food Lions, as well as regional leadership, gathered at the Gang Free building on County Home Road to begin two days' worth of work reflooring and repainting the kitchen, installing new freezer and refrigerator units, filling the pantry with food, setting up new picnic tables and even tilling Gang Free's garden.

"I'm excited about this. I'm excited they chose us..." said Melissa Elliott, founder of Gang Free. "With the new freezer and refrigerator, the capacity of food that we're going to be able to house now is going to be a benefit not just to the children but to the community. We'll be able to house more and serve more."

Founded in 2015, Gang Free is an organization that aims to "empower and educate individuals to live a life liberated of crime." A major focus to that mission is at-risk youth in Henderson.

On average, Gang Free's summer and afterschool programs are attended by 60 to 70 kids per day.

Elliott said that when she first started Gang Free, food security wasn't one of her main focuses. However, since starting her youth services, that focus quickly changed when she discovered that many of her kids weren't eating at night.

"To date we have served over 21,000 individual meals to the children since last June," Elliott said.

Gang Free runs almost exclusively off donations and Elliott's own money. Through a partnership with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, Elliott is able to purchase food to fill Gang Free's pantry at pennies on the dollar.

It was through this partnership with the food pantry that Gang Free was nominated and selected for the Food Lion pantry makeover program.

Caitlin Cohn, food resources supervisor at the food bank, said that the food bank nominated Gang Free to receive the pantry makeover because they knew that Elliott and Gang Free had clear goals to reach in the community and just needed a bit of help getting there.

"We have a great partnership with Food Lion so for us at the food bank the point of these pantry makeovers is to target areas where we knew we had a great community partner that just needed further community support to get to the level they envisioned," Cohn said.

"The Great Pantry Makeover" campaign is part of Food Lion Feeds. As part of the Food Lion Feeds program, the company has committed to provide 500 million meals to individuals and families in need by the end of 2020.

Over the first two years of the pantry makeover program, Food Lion only remodeled 30 pantries per year. However, with 2017 being the company's 60th anniversary Food Lion is redoing 60 pantries across the company's 10-state operating area.

Mike Hall, the director of operations for all four Henderson Food Lions, said that he and Food Lion really love the work that Elliott and Gang Free are doing in Henderson.

Over the past two years Food Lion has filled Gang Free's pantry with food three times, so Hall said that he and his local stores were very familiar with the work that Gang Free does.

"We're proud to be connected with Melissa and the work that her and her team do -- it really just touches our hearts ..." Hall said. "I could not think of a better way and more of a priority than to make sure that our youth is given every chance that they can get to have a place to come that is safe and to get nourished."

The makeover will take two days. It started Tuesday and will finish today. By the end of today, store managers from local Food Lions, as well as from stores in Virginia, will have volunteered their time to make between $5,000 to $7,000 worth of improvements to the Gang Free facility.

Hall said that he has heard stories from Elliott about the impact of the meals she serves to her kids, and he said those stories are what the Food Lion Feeds program is all about.

"Listening to Melissa is what really motivates us and it ties right back to what our organization is trying to do to help and serve the communities that we operate in. This is a perfect scenario here at Gang Free," Hall said.

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(c)2017 Henderson Daily Dispatch, N.C.

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