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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I’m your host, Rich Helppie with a very important topic. We’re going to be talking about food, nutrition and making sure that everyone in this great land is fed and fed well. With us today to talk about this is Ruth Mageria of Cros Ministries. She has been on the staff of Cros for 24 non-consecutive years, and has held the executive position for the last 12 years. Ruth, welcome to The Common Bridge. I’m so glad you take the time to meet with us today.
Ruth Mageria
And thank you, Rich. I really it’s really good to meet you, and it’s good to be here, and especially talking about a very important topic.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, we all need to eat every day, and we need to eat well, and that’s not always possible. If you don’t mind, can you give the listeners, readers and viewers of The Common Bridge a little bit about your biography, and then a little bit about what Cros Ministries is up to.
Ruth Mageria
A little bit about myself. Again, my name is Ruth Mageria, and I am originally from Kenya, and have been in this country, the United States of America, since 1995, and what brought me to the US is school. I did my grad studies in Maryland, at Towson University. And then in 1997 I moved down to Florida, to West Palm Beach, Florida, and I was able to start working with Cros Ministries. Cros Ministries is an agency and a faith based organization that has been in the community since 1978. We are celebrating 48 years, but looking forward to 50 years very soon, in a couple of years. The mission of Cros is to work with people in the community, to work with community partners and collaborate with them, so that we can make sure that those who are hungry, those who are food insecure, have food to eat. Our vision - if we were to do our job well - is to make sure that everyone who is in need has access to healthy food - that’s the bottom line - who we are and what we do and how we want to do it. Cros Ministries was begun originally by a group of United Methodist congregations in Palm Beach County who felt there was need for a ministry or an agency like Cros so that the congregations, the churches, could support that program, instead of people who needed food going from one church to the other. And so that’s how Cros was begun. But as I think about who Cros is today, 48 years later, we are an interfaith organization that works with people from different faith communities, different faith traditions. Because it doesn’t matter where you are, which community of faith you belong to, and also even whether you are a business, whether you are a corporation, whether you’re another nonprofit, we can all agree that there are people in our community who need food to eat, and we can all agree that we can come together and do that. In a nutshell, that’s who Cros is. And, in a while, I will talk about some of the ways we are able to ensure that people have food to eat.
Richard Helppie
Well, let’s go there. About food pantries, is it prepared foods? Do people come to pick up food? Do they get it delivered to their home? How do you go about making sure people get fed?
Ruth Mageria
We do this through different three different programs. Our community food pantries are really our biggest program, and we are based in Palm Beach County. We have nine different locations in Palm Beach County where we have food pantries, and then we also have one that’s in Martin County. I know your listeners are all over the world and all over the US, we are in South Florida. That’s where we are, the bottom half of Florida. We’re in Palm Beach County and nine of those Palm Beach locations are here in Palm Beach County, and then we have one in Martin County. When you think about food pantries, that’s where people come in and they receive food assistance, non-perishable food items. They’ll receive fruits and vegetables, they’ll receive meat, frozen products. This is not prepared meals, this is kind of like going to the grocery store. When you think about food pantries, I want to say a little bit about that, because there’s always a confusion about food pantries and food banks. Those are two different things. Different communities have food banks. Food banks are where we as food pantries and hot meal programs go to get food and then we give it out to those who are in need. Somebody who needs food assistance, when they go to a food bank they may not necessarily be able to get food, because the way the food bank is set up it’s to be able to give large quantities of food to agencies like Cros. That’s who they provide food to, Cros Ministries. If you’re familiar with the Palm Beach County area, they are as far west as Belle Glade, which is on the western side of Palm Beach County, all the way to the east, along the I-95 corridor, south to Delray Beach, north to Martin County, and that’s in Indian town, and everywhere in between. In 2025 we served 121,000 individuals through our food pantry program. That number continues to increase. When I think about our food pantries, especially, we have seen the need increase every single year. It’s actually worse today than it was during COVID and sometimes that’s hard to even fathom. A lot of people coming into our food pantries, many of them have jobs, many of them are working but the money just isn’t enough, and they’re having to make very difficult choices. Do I buy food? Do I pay my rent? Do I pay my mortgage? Do I make sure that I put gas in my car so that I can get to work and be able to pay my bills? And so that’s who’s coming to our food pantries. That’s one of the areas we’ve served.
Richard Helppie
That’s very interesting. I did not know that distinction between a food bank and a food pantry. Is the way it works that the food bank obtains food through donations or people give them money - charitable donations - to acquire food and then they allocate some to you, or do you sometimes get food or donations from other sources?
Ruth Mageria
The food banks, the way they operate, they do get food from big donations. They also have warehouses much larger than most of the food pantries, like Cros, which right now we have over 3000 square feet of storage space for our warehouse that feeds our food pantries and our hot meal program that I’ll talk about. For us as an agency, we are also securing food through food donations. People will have food drives and donate to Cros Ministries, people are able to go out and purchase food to donate. Some of the money on our budget is allocated to go out and purchase food, because we don’t get all the food that we need from the food banks. However, the food bank is also able to receive USDA funding, and that’s the Emergency Food Assistance Program. That’s a separate line item on the USDA, and they’re able to receive some of that funding and some of that food then goes to us. Our local food banks here in Palm Beach County have over 100 agencies that are registered with them that receive food from them.
Richard Helppie
For people that aren’t familiar with Florida and particularly Palm Beach, they hear Palm Beach and they think, oh, West Palm Beach, it’s a very wealthy area. It’s where the President of the United States lives, and there’s tremendous wealth. It just seems a little incongruous that, gosh, there are people in Palm Beach County that are in need of food. For people that aren’t familiar with the county itself can you talk a little bit about that? Because I’m sure this is going to come as a surprise to folks.
Ruth Mageria
Rich, I’ll tell you this, every time I’m out and about, every time I go to, for example, Washington, DC. - because we do go to DC to for different causes, or even when I do go back to my own home country of Kenya, and people are hearing the work I do, it’s very difficult to understand. And I think I want to also - maybe here before I talk about Palm Beach County - talk about the fact that right now the term that we are using is hunger, where people truly don’t have anything to eat, and that’s there, but the big one that we face here in our community is food insecurity, where there is food to eat, but it’s not enough. People are having to make choices. It may not even be healthy, because when we think about food, we’re not just thinking about what people are eating, but also, is it healthy? Are we having fruits and vegetables? that’s a big thing too. Also when you think about Palm Beach County and food insecurity, the second thing that I want to say is that here in Palm Beach County - and yes, we do have the island of Palm Beach, which is where the President has a home - but if you think about Palm Beach County, 192,000 individuals are considered food insecure. That’s a huge number. When you think about a public school system, the Palm Beach County School District, almost one in every four children is food insecure. They are on either free or reduced lunches. The biggest thing about hunger and food insecurity, it’s not just about not having food to eat, it’s about not having access to the right food that is needed, as well as not having enough food to eat. Palm Beach County is also very expensive and that is what is really pushing people coming into our food pantries. Rents are very high, mortgages have gone up because of all the hurricanes that have hit Florida, homeowners insurance costs are high. When you also think about seniors, that’s a huge population of people who do not have food security because they’re on a fixed income, their HOA fees have increased drastically. And so the money they had put aside for food has to go to pay their HOA fees. I mean, right now, in just the last month, gas prices have skyrocketed. It’s over $1 extra a gallon that I’m paying into for gas. Those are some of the things that cause food insecurity. But then I’ll also say, for those who are not familiar with Palm Beach County, if you head from the eastern Palm Beach County, which is where the island of Palm Beach is, and you head west to the Glades, which is the western part of Palm Beach County, it’s very drastic, everything is very different, everything changes. You have those who are very wealthy and have a lot, and then everybody in between. That’s some of the misconception that we have when you think about Palm Beach County.
Richard Helppie
Thank you for that because I know that will help our listeners, our readers and our viewers understand the mission. Before I go into that, I want to say that I have a substantial background in educational support and in healthcare. And in both of those, what we know in healthcare unequivocally, the data shows it, is that much disease is alleviated with good food. (Ruth Mageria: Yes, yes.) That obesity is from over-processed foods, chemicals and colors and things that cause diabetes and hypertension and all of those long term killers. We know that feeding people is less expensive than treating them for bad food. Then my work in educational philanthropy is that you’ve got to have that child in school fed or they can’t learn. Many school districts are providing breakfast, lunch and dinner and a backpack to take home and things to pick up over the summer. Getting people fed really goes many different directions, but let me ask you this if I may; I understand how food comes into the bank, comes into the pantry, and then how do people know to where to get this and do they have to have transportation to come pick it up? How do you get food from the pantry into people’s mouths?
Ruth Mageria
I’ll even answer that question in a broader way, because you’re really talking about infrastructure and logistics right now, and that’s one of the biggest things that’s sometimes almost a bottleneck in the work that we do, and sometimes we don’t think about. Even before we get to the people I’ll talk about, before the food gets to agencies like Cros Ministries, it has to come from either the food bank, maybe sometimes it’s grocery stores that give donations, different congregations, different businesses, different schools will have food drives, they’ll have all that. The first thing that we have to do is to make sure that food gets to Cros so that we can distribute it. We need vehicles. We need to be able to have access, to be able to go pick it up, you need staffing to be able to do that. Cros has that, but not everybody does. Then I’m talking about some of the agencies - and there are many agencies in not just Palm Beach County, but I’m sure all over, especially the communities that do very good work - but maybe they are volunteer run. They don’t have the vehicles. They don’t have access to funding to purchase what is needed. That’s a big one. Once the food gets to Cros, then we need to make sure that we have the capacity to hold the food that is needed. A lot of places don’t have that capacity, don’t have a warehouse. We have warehouse space in different locations that totals to over 3000 square feet. Not many people have that. That food comes into our warehouses, we bring in volunteers that will sort it. Because when you do food drives, food is collected and everything is in there, but we need to make sure we know how many, we have vegetables, we have mac and cheese, we have pastas, we have meat - we categorize it. Because when we give out a bag of food at Cros we want to make sure that there are some standard staples that go into that bag. We want to make sure people have that. And you talked about making sure that it’s nutritious, that it’s not just about eating food, it’s about eating the right food, so you have that, and then at Cros, we have warehouse trucks, box trucks, that are able to then distribute the food from our big warehouse to our different pantries. Our different pantries, we don’t have space to store food for a month. When we have more than 50-60 families coming in every single day we don’t have that much space. We are really grateful, because a lot of our space is given to us, donated to us through collaborations with different churches and congregations, different community groups and other non-profits, different municipalities and cities. It’s not a big space that we have but we have to make sure that the food is in there. And then the other big one is how do people get to us? For us here in Palm Beach County, through the Palm Beach County Hunger Relief Plan through United Way of Palm Beach County, we have what is called a food finder map. And so if somebody Googles “food finder map, Palm Beach County,” a map come comes up that tells them where different food pantries are in our community, what time they are open, what they need to do to get food. That’s one of the ways people are able to figure out where food pantries are. At Cros we are able to do that through our website, through our own social media pages, but a very big one is through word of mouth. If someone comes to one of our pantries, then they’re able to go and tell some of their other friends where they can go too.
Richard Helppie
At the pantry, are you expecting people to come in regularly? Like, we know that this particular family comes in every week or when you open your doors in the morning, you’re never sure who’s going to walk through that door?
Ruth Mageria
We are never sure who’s going to walk through that door. Now with our food pantries - and I want to make it clear that this is Cros Ministries food pantries - yes, people can come in twice a month. They can receive food from us twice a month. And we have a way, a system of verifying that. We do not verify income, or rather, because we receive food from the USDA through our food banks, the USDA has a form that people self-declare their own income or whether they’re receiving different benefits from the government to help them qualify for the USDA food. That’s what we use. If somebody comes in, they’ll get food. But if we don’t qualify them; it’s not like we’re asking them to bring all their financial paperwork to come in and get food. That’s how they come in. When they come in, we really don’t know who’s coming in, and that’s why I said our goal is to make sure we have enough food that will last that time. In some of our food pantries, there are times that within an hour and a half, we’ve had 120 households come through and we’re able to get them through, sometimes two hours. We don’t know that, we just want to make sure we have the food that we need. And if we run out on that day, then the pantry coordinator there will then let our warehouse know that we do need to bring in more food.
Richard Helppie
This is really interesting. I wanted to unwrap that a little bit. If I am a person, a resident in Palm Beach County, I can’t just walk in and say, I’m hungry today, please give me a box of food. I have to fill out a government form, and then you put it in a system, so that if I try to come in every day you’ll know, wait a minute, you can only come in twice a month. Is that how it works? (Ruth Mageria: Yes.) And that is because there’s taxpayer money in there and that comes with certain obligations. And then you said the food finding that is through United Way, through the charity end?
Ruth Mageria
The food finder map is just to let people know what other agencies in the community are providing food assistance. We are registered there. But let me go back to what you were saying in terms of coming in. When you come in, the amount of food you receive is dependent on your family size. Again, I’m talking about Cros Ministries, because each each pantry is different, but for us at Cros, we make sure that you’re getting food. If you have just an individual, one to three, there is a standard bag they get. If they are more people, then they’ll get that. We do ask to see how many people are in your family. And it’s very simple, if you have school report cards, if you have anything, something from like you had applied for SNAP benefits and you have a letter that shows the number of people, we take that. We are not making you bring all your children in, because at the end of the day, I say this, the people who are coming to our food pantries don’t want to be there. If they did not need to, they wouldn’t be. However, most people are coming in because they have people that depend on them. A lot of parents are coming in because they have children. I say this, when my son was younger- he’s now a young adult - I would have done whatever it took to make sure he had food to eat. We have so many stories of grandparents who are taking care of grandchildren and they had already retired on a fixed income. They did not know they were going to be taking care of their grandchildren. Then we have also so many people who are coming in, like last year in November during the government shutdown, so many people came in because they didn’t have money to go out to the grocery store and buy food.
Richard Helppie
These are the interesting things that people need to know about. I will tell you I didn’t know how they worked, but I am interested in hearing what you’re saying, that there is eligibility, there is screening, there is at least some measurement of how often someone can come in, and those are great barriers to make sure that the charitable hearts are not abused and that it’s very responsible. You mentioned the government shutdown, and look, I think we can all agree that the government - I don’t care what side of the aisle one might be on - they’re ineffective doing their basic job, which is, let’s keep the doors open. That doesn’t seem to be that hard, but the ripple effect when SNAP benefits stopped and EBT benefits stopped, what did you see in your food pantries on those events?
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Ruth Mageria
We saw so many people coming in, so many people coming in that we did not expect. We saw an air controller who came in with his family who did not even know what to do. Because if you’re coming in for the first time... if I go to the pantry I’m putting myself in someone’s shoes. I’ve never been to a pantry, maybe I’m the one who has given to the pantries. I’m the one who, whether it’s my church or my community of faith, my synagogue, does food drives or my business does a food drive. Now my job, I don’t have money coming in, so I’m going to a food pantry. I don’t even know what is needed. I don’t know what to do. I’m coming in very embarrassed, because I never wanted to be in this position. I’m coming in thinking, am I taking food from somebody who really needs it? Because I’m thinking, at least I have some money, hopefully, that’s coming in the next few weeks, can I wait until then? I want to say, I’m emphasizing the people coming into our food pantries not wanting to be there. I’ve been at a food pantry where somebody came in, and it broke my heart to hear that [that person say] last year my business did a food drive during Thanksgiving, and I was the one who led the church, but now I don’t have a job and I need food and here I am. And sometimes they are even asking, what can I do? Can I volunteer so that I can get this food? Because a lot of people aren’t used to just receiving food, they’re used to doing something for it. Also, it’s really hard when you see people coming in with their children very early in the morning. When you think about the summer months - we still have a few months to go before summer – but children out of school, there are no summer camps, they don’t have enough food to eat. It’s really difficult when you think about that. But now I want to talk about some of our other programs, because they do build into some of the work that we do and the bigger picture about food security.
Richard Helppie
Before we jump over there, I understand how the need gets created and how people find you, and the screenings that you do and the reluctance that they have. What’s been your experience with people using the food pantry for nutrition temporarily, and then becoming employed or otherwise finding resources, and they’re no longer a beneficiary. Any insight on that?
Ruth Mageria
I will give you a personal story that still gives me goosebumps today. A few years ago, we had just moved into the office space that we are in and I went to our local municipality because we needed to make a utility payment. Rich, I’ll tell you, I wasn’t a very happy camper, because we had done everything we needed to do, but I still needed to go in because somebody hadn’t done what they needed to do. I walk into this office, I happen to have my shirt - I don’t have it on today - that says “Cros Ministries staff,” and I wait in line. When I get to the counter, the lady who’s serving me looks at me and she’s like, thank you so much. I’m looking at her, and I have no idea, I don’t know her, I don’t know why she’s thanking me and she looks at me nice. I asked her, do I know you? And she says, you’re from Cros Ministries. And I said, Yes. And she said, You know what? Last year, I was without a job and I came to Cros Ministries, the food pantry, and you all made sure that I had food to eat. I got food. The volunteers, they gave me food, they listened to me, they told me everything would be okay. And today I have a job, and I want to thank you because you made sure through your Cros Ministries and the food pantries, I had food to give my children. And so this particular lady doesn’t need to come to the food pantry because now she has a job and doesn’t need that. We have so many people like that. Others who have come to our food pantry, because they come on a regular basis, we’re seeing them either once or twice a month - we have volunteers and staff work at the pantries - we get to know them. And we’re like, we haven’t seen so and so in quite a while, and then five months later, they pull in in their car and they have food that they are bringing to say, thank you because of you, and bringing food. That’s who we are working with. I also want to say something else, especially about the government shutdown. Yes, we had a lot of people who were looking for food assistance but I will also let you know that the community came together because they could see what was happening with all those lines at different food areas. They knew people weren’t getting paid. People called - our office line was running off the hook because people wanted to know how can we help. How can we come and volunteer? How can we give? At the end of the day, we also have a community that comes in and stands in the gap with agencies that, like Cros, are just trying to make sure that people have food to eat.
Richard Helppie
I think that is a very important lesson, and one that I’d like to take a little time with because it goes to policy decisions. Now I don’t think this is legal, but in our latest calamity from Washington, the TSA workers at the airport weren’t getting paid, and when you think about the level of ridiculous: Congress mandated the screenings, Congress mandated that they would have a monopoly on who did the screening, Congress did not fund the screeners. And someone said there should just be a collection jar next to the TSA screeners and when you go through put $1 or $5 in. And I’m like, there you go, Joe, just go right around the bureaucracy, because people generally, if they see need, they are going to want to support. Here are some of the stories in the news that we should probably talk about, because I’m going to venture that you run into this. There are three things I’m going to give you, because it all may have the same level of response; one part of it might be easy. If you have professional staff working for Cros or any place in that chain, where does the funding come from? Secondly, that if people are dependent on that government chain, where does it start? I had no idea that the USDA came and did that on a regular basis, that seems to be risky. Then, coupled with that are the calamities that we’ve seen in Minnesota, where money was given from the taxpayers to ostensibly feed people but nobody got fed. People are going, well, wait a minute, why are we doing that? And then the third thing - this is a personal observation, it’s just a question - last Christmas, there was a group at a church saying they’re providing Christmas dinner. They had the reporter out on the street, and there are people waiting for the church to open so they could get their Christmas dinner, and the cars and vehicles that were coming in were better than your average car. Those are the kinds of things that people are looking at, going, well, where are the salaries coming from? What about the misspent government money that’s in there? And are there people that take advantage of the system and how prevalent is that?
Ruth Mageria
Okay, let me answer that, and you’ll have to - because I don’t have my pen with me, I didn’t write all those - please remind me. Let me start off with the whole idea - and it’s true, there are agencies that may come up that are not using the funds, that are not being good stewards of the funds that have been given to them; that goes without saying. But I will say this, here in Palm Beach County, we have a group called Non-profits First, and they are an accreditation agency, and we at Cros are accredited to have the highest level of excellency with them. That means they’ll come and check our books, they check our 990, we are audited every single year. We invest in an audit firm to come and do that and they go through everything, not just the financial part. They go through the governance part of our board. They go through the fundraising and where we’re getting these monies from and how is it being allocated. When we apply for funding from a funder, it’s very specific, this is what we are going to do, and then we have a report that says this is what we did, and these are the people that we fed. Those are some of the things that help with the checks and balances that way. Being accredited is important because then you make sure that something like what you talked about is not happening within. But the other big thing - and I want to talk about this because some of your the viewers and listeners might also be on boards of nonprofits - it is a responsibility of the board to ensure that the board directors have a fiduciary responsibility. My board is always asking those questions. They receive finance reports every single month, and they’ll be asking, hmm, are we doing the right thing? Do we have what it takes to be sustainable? If not, do we have enough resources to keep us going given this is the need, these are the people who we are serving, these are the resources that are coming in. That’s the board’s responsibility. How I’ll answer that second question - and believe you, me, Rich, we get this all the time - the people who are coming in for food have better cars than we do. Not just us but even we have a lot of volunteers, and this is what I’m going to say about that. We have no idea where those people are coming from or what got them into that. For example, today, if I lost my job and I don’t have enough food, people will see the car that I’m driving and think, well, Ruth is driving a really good car. She doesn’t need to be coming to a food pantry. But I don’t have a job, and that car is paid off, so I need to keep that car so that I can look for another job and be able to go to work, that’s why I have that car. For some people - and this is so true - that car might also be their home. They may be homeless, they don’t have a home, a roof over their heads, and so they want to make sure they keep that car, because that might be where they have to spend the night. I know it’s very difficult, and believe you, me, I had to learn this. As I mentioned, I come from Kenya, so when I started working at Cros many years ago, I didn’t understand how someone could call me from their home and I could hear a TV in the background, and I’m thinking to myself, sell the TV and go buy food. But even if they sold their TV and sold their car, they’ll only buy food for a few months, and then they will be without food and they don’t have a way to get to work. And I have to say this, here in Palm Beach County - I know other areas have good public transportation - here in Palm Beach County, if you don’t have a car, it’s very difficult to move from place to place. That’s how I would answer the question of people’s cars, people’s vehicles. What do you do? For some people, you want to make sure you’re still going to work and doing what you need to do. And again, I say that’s the majority. I think the third thing you had asked me was about funding, and the sources of our funding. Was that one of the questions?
Richard Helppie
Well, no, I was asking about where the tax money flows in, because I did not know USDA was in the food banks. That was interesting. And also, when SNAP went away, you were there. You were the social safety net. You made sure people in the community got fed. And of course, I had to think maybe what you’re doing this is a better option than waiting for people in Congress to have their stupid fights and not send food. Nobody’s going to stop sending food to you. I’d rather give you money to go feed people than to send it to Washington.
Ruth Mageria
There you go, I’ll say so. In terms of the within the food bank, the USDA that I mentioned is the Emergency Food Assistance Program, that’s some monies that go to the food banks to help purchase food that we receive. But then I’ll also say, last year, we knew this with so many changes we lost some of our government funding through different programs that we received, which has also meant that we’ve had to increase our fundraising so that we’re able to go out and purchase the food we need. I can also say food is much more expensive today than it was a year ago, and it’s going to only get more expensive as we think about it, especially the gas prices and we haven’t even seen all that.
Richard Helppie
Oh, the war in Iran has driven up fuel prices and fuel is in everything. If you’re bringing in a load of tomatoes from Central Florida to Palm Beach County, it’s going to cost more to get those tomatoes there. Of course, at this date, we’re recording this on April 2, we have no idea when these conditions are going to change. (Ruth Mageria: No, we don’t.) But in the meantime people are hungry. I’m a devoted Christian and we need to take care of people in our communities. As in my public life, we need to make sure that we have a responsive government that has good policies, doing sensible things. We seem to be doing a lot better job if it’s left up to the community than by washing it through bureaucracies that can be canceled on a whim.
Ruth Mageria
I think for me, that’s one of the things that you’re balancing. I do really want to talk about two of our other programs. I’ve talked about the food pantries, but we also have a hot meal program, the Caring Kitchen, where we provide meals. And last year, 2025, we provided 50,000 meals at lunchtime. We also collaborate with different partners in the Delray Beach area and we’re able to provide lunches five days a week to people who are in need. This is a hot meal you can come in and get. With this hot meal, we are not checking anything, Rich. If you went to one of our sites today, you would get a meal because anybody who needs a meal receives that, but then also, through the Caring Kitchen program, we are able to provide meals to those who are home-bound. Now, with that program, we do verify that they are home-bound and they are not able to come to any of our sites. We do it in a very specific area in Delray Beach - three different zip codes - and we’re able to provide a maximum of 120 meals. The maximum is just because of the funding that we have. At least people in those zip codes who are homebound have five meals a week. And then we collaborate with other different partners in Delray Beach. Some of them, it could be a church that has different programs but they don’t have the capacity to be able to cook a meal so we provide them with food that they are able to serve. Some others may be a group that has an outreach program, but they don’t have the capacity to provide the meal, and so we collaborate with them, and we provide them the meal that they then go out and serve. That’s Caring Kitchen. And the last one is Gleaning, for those of us who come from either a Jewish or Christian background - I know that’s something that’s in the Torah and in the Bible. It is where we go out and we recover fresh produce that would otherwise go to waste. Palm Beach County is a very rich agricultural community, huge, and the farmers plant their crops, but then when they come to harvest, sometimes they’re not able to sell everything. Then I also say, we as consumers are very picky on what we want our tomato to look like. If it has a blemish, we are not buying it. If it’s too big or too small, we will not buy that. And yet, it’s good quality produce. We are able to take volunteers, and last year, between November of 2024 and August of 2025 which is at the gleaning season, we were able - with over 3700 volunteers - to recover 460,000 pounds of fresh produce. That fresh produce went to our different food banks, different distribution partners, because that’s more than we can accommodate at Cros. Our different distribution partners, which include the food banks in our community and some of the other area agencies, came to the fields. They picked up the food, the fresh produce, and then they went and they distributed it to the different groups that come in. And I’ll say this especially about our Gleaning program. We talked about food as medicine or the fact that food is needed for us to stay healthy, the fact that we are able to introduce fresh fruits and vegetables into the system is really good, because if you’re on a fixed budget, that’s the last thing you’re thinking about - I’m not going to be thinking about apples and oranges and cucumbers and tomatoes, because they’re very expensive. I’m really grateful we’re able to do that. The second thing is, in our Gleaning program you can be as young as five years old. This morning - today is, as you said, April 2 - we had a group of students that were out in the field gleaning, they can be as young as five years old. They could be seasoned; we had a 92 year old once, gleaning. But the best thing about this is to see children hold a tomato, and they cannot believe that the tomato came from the field, because for them, they think tomatoes come from the grocery store, because we don’t know, you don’t know. That is awesome, being able to see that. But for me, the third thing, when I think about gleaning, if you’ve ever gone gleaning... when we go out and harvest the fresh produce, we’re only there from about 8:30 to about 11:30, just two and a half, three hours, but by the time you’re done, you’re tired. I mean, you’re bending, you’re on your knees if you’re doing potatoes or cucumbers or green peppers. But for me, it makes me appreciate our farm workers. Whenever I see my food, I know it just didn’t get to the table. I eat a salad and I’m thinking, I know how the lettuce got here and it’s hard work, I think about the cabbage and how it got here. It makes me really appreciate our farm workers who work day in and day out and sometimes are not making enough. I’m not even going to get into so many other things that are happening there, but that’s what I will say.
Richard Helppie
I hope that people that are affluent enough to have a device and the time to listen to a program like this will hear your words, because this is what we’re called to do, to make a positive contribution. None of these bounties that are available to us just happened, it takes hard work and dedicated people like you. Ruth, as we wrap up today, just how do people get in touch with Cros Ministries if they would like to support this awesome work that you’re doing?
Ruth Mageria
They can do that through our website. We are Cros Ministries, and it’s Cros Ministries - just one ‘S.’ They can go to our website, which is CrosMinistries.org, or Google us, or find us if you just put in Cros Ministries. Or even call our telephone number, it’s 561-233-9009. One of the things I would also say as we close, I want to close with this. Sometimes the work that we do, the needs that are there, what I’ve talked about, can be very, very overwhelming. Sometimes you’re thinking, even if I did a food drive with my school, with my synagogue, with my church, or brought in food, how does it make a difference, it’s only two bags of food. But I’ll say if we all did that, collectively, we can make a difference. Whether you’re in Palm Beach County or wherever you are, figure out what some of the needs in your community are. I want to end with one of my favorite quotes by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu of the South African Anglican Church, he said, “Do your little bit of good wherever you are, it’s those little bits of good that overwhelm the world.” If each of us did just one or two things, we will overwhelm the world with good, and we are going to be able to meet the needs of our neighbors.
Richard Helppie
That is a beautiful closing comment. Godspeed to you in this important work that you’re doing. And for the listeners, readers and viewers of The Common Bridge, our future is in our hand. We talk a lot about policy. We’re all frustrated by the fact that the people we hire to make good policies don’t do it. We’ve got an opportunity to contribute to a wonderful place like Cros Ministries. As we learned today, you have the opportunity to go into a field and find vegetables on a South Florida summer day to find out what real work is about. With our guest from Cros Ministries, Ruth Mageria, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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