By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Thursday was a good day for the Brown Bag Food Project, an endeavor that is usually the group doing good.
At a Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours social, Brown Bag received two checks generated by the ACT BG’s recent Amazing Race fundraiser. The check from ACT BG was for just over $4,800, and the Modern Woodman matched $2,500 of those funds.
Then Nathan Eberly, a member of the Brown Bag board and a Modern Woodman rep, surprised Brown Bag founder Amy Holland with a Hometown Hero award.
“All this is because of what you do,” Eberly said. Her work inspired him to join the effort.
The honor came with a $100 check for the charity of her choice, and there was little doubt what that would be.
As usual Holland had little to say. She lets her actions speak for her.
She got into action starting Brown Bag in early 2016. She learned that some of her fellow workers at Walmart were having trouble feeding themselves and their families some because they were out on medical leave.
She took it upon herself to buy a few bags of food and deliver it to them.
That has grown into a project that provides parcels of food to more than 300 people a month. Holland said that’s 60-70 families. The parcels have a value of about $60.
The idea is to provide emergency food assistance to tide people over for five days, though often the parcels can last as long as a week, until they can seek assistance elsewhere.
The food is given with minimal paperwork and questions. People are eligible for a parcel every six months, though that’s stretched in some extreme cases.
And at the end of each week, clients can stop by for additional bread and sweet goods donated by the Panera restaurants in Bowling Green and Perrysburg and Jimmy John’s in BG.
Peg Holland, the founder’s mother who is on the board, said she’s not surprised by her daughter’s actions.
She remembers when Amy was in second grade at Crim. She sought out a girl everyone was ignoring and played with her. Her classmates told her if she played with that girl they wouldn’t play with her.
She reported this to her mother who told her: “You play with anyone you want.
“She’s always had a big heart, and I’m so proud of her,” Peg Holland said of her daughter.
Brown Bag started out operating out of Peg Holland’s home.
In November the charity moved into its new home on West Merry Street. That allowed Brown Bag to receive federal surplus food items from the SeaGate Food Bank of Northwest Ohio. Those can be lots of shredded cheese this month or chickens last month. Fresh blueberries were a bonus this month.
Most of Brown Bag’s food comes from individual donations.
Usually, Peg Holland said, the project uses its cash donations to buy the fresh products, vegetables fruits, milk, eggs, and meat as well as personal, including feminine, hygiene products, and diapers.
Heather Paramore, a board member, noted that Brown Bag makes a point of providing people the ingredients to make full meals, not a random selection of canned goods.
Brown Bag has worked with nutrition students at Bowling Green State University to assess what’s being given, and to develop recipes.
Right now the project is stockpiling dried beans, which most people don’t use, to give to the migrant workers who arrive in the summer.
Peg Holland said they try to provide them with the food they are accustomed to eating.
Amy Holland said having the new facility has helped. People know where to find us now, she said.
Her mother said they try to make people who come for help feel at ease. It may be a father who has suddenly lost his job and finds himself asking for help for the first time.
Or it can be someone who is homeless, she said, adding “there are homeless people in Bowling Green.” Brown Bag tailors what it gives them to what they can use. A can of soup won’t do someone who is homeless and doesn’t have a can opener any good.
Amy Holland said sometimes Brown Bag’s own cupboards are becoming bare and they wonder,: “Are we going to survive next week? But something always comes through. We always find a way.”
She hopes Brown Bag continues to grow. “We’re just getting to a sliver of people in need.”
