Second Helpings
Guided by their mission – to share the love of Christ by recovering food for those who need to be served in Angelina County – the men and women volunteers of Second Helpings work hard to connect food sources with food needs.
Origins
A desire to serve others, especially through feeding the hungry, is a part of the DNA of Second Helpings founder, Aurelia Newton. When Aurelia and her husband, Mark, arrived in Lufkin to pastor Lufkin’s First Baptist Church, she soon recognized the level of food insecurity in the area. She had already started a successful backpack buddy program in their last community, and she began dreaming of beginning something similar in Lufkin. A 2017 change in Texas law helped shape her dream into the program that is Second Helpings today.
Growth
Aurelia recruited friends and fellow church members to design and implement a program that collects prepared but unused food from school cafeterias and redistributes it to organizations that feed those in need. The program officially launched at the beginning of the 2017 school year. In 2018, the program moved from its original home in the Family Life Center kitchen of First Baptist to space provided by a local warehouse.
As of December 2020, Second Helpings has distributed over 170,000 meals throughout Angelina County. Aurelia and the volunteers will tell you, however, that the key ingredient to the organization’s success is the prayer that covers all their efforts and the love exhibited in everything they do.
Number of Meals = 170,000+
Volunteers (L:R Jule Fenley and Demetress Harrell) from Second Helpings of Angelina County in Lufkin High School cafeteria kitchen.
Volunteers (L:R Jule Fenley, Aurelia Newton, and Demetress Harrell) from Second Helpings of Angelina County with the cafeteria staff at Lufkin High School.
Volunteers (L:R Jule Fenley, Aurelia Newton, and Demetress Harrell) from Second Helpings of Angelina County delivering to The Salvation Army of Lufkin
Volunteers (L:R Becca Chance, Glenda King, Aurelia Newton, Karen Foley, Lisa Hurst, Sheila Telford, Melissa Abeldt) from Second Helpings of Angelina County. (Photo / Lisa Crow / lisacrowphotography.smugmug.com)
Texas Law
In 2017, the Texas legislature through Senate Bill 725 amended Section 33 of the Texas Education Code to provide that “a school district or open-enrollment charter school may allow a campus to elect to donate food to a nonprofit organization.”
The new law provided that food donated by the campus might include packaged or unpackaged surplus food prepared to be served at the campus cafeteria. This new source of food had the potential to be a game-changer for nonprofits that focus on alleviating food insecurity.
How We Do It
Prepare it.
School cafeterias workers wrap up the prepared food left over after the day’s lunch period.
Gather it.
Volunteers pick up the food from the school cafeterias in insulated boxes and take the food to the designated community partner.
Give it.
The community partner serves or distributes the food to those in need that it serves.
Store it.
Some food is brought back to the Second Helpings hub to be frozen for later distribution when a need arises.
