Jewish and Catholic School Students Team Up to Battle Hunger in Mounmouth and Ocean Counties

Middle School students from Saint Peter School, located in Point Pleasant Beach, and Middle School students from Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Monmouth County, located in Marlboro, teamed up to unload 1,500 turkeys that Stop & Shop Supermarket donated to The FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties.

(Pictured Left to Right:) Nancy Hannon of Pleasant, an 8th grader at Saint Peter School, Brielle Natenzon of Colts Neck, a 7th Grader at Solomon Schechter, and Emma Dougherty of Manasquan, an 8th Grader at Saint Peter School.

Stop & Shop’s Turkey Express program will deliver nearly 21,000 turkeys to hunger relief organizations in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island this holiday season.

The students say they are thankful that their families can provide them with all they need, say they hope their efforts will lead others to help the FoodBank meet the needs of the hungry. Both the Catholic and Jewish students are taught about the importance of caring for those in need and for contributing to charitable causes. The youngsters say this effort will allow them to put into action what they have been taught

About Hunger in Monmouth and Ocean Counties:

• The Real Cost of Living (RCL) in Monmouth County for a family of two adults and two school aged children is $74,287; in Ocean County it’s $62,936.
• One in every 10 households in Monmouth County have earnings below the RCL; one in every 7 households earn below the RCL in Ocean County.
• One in every 10 people in Monmouth and Ocean Counties receive “emergency” food from the FoodBank’s network of pantries, soup kitchens and other agencies.
• The gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase. While personal income increased among the wealthy, so did poverty among the poorer segments of the population, rising from 5.3% to 6.8% in Monmouth County and from 6.7 to 11% in Ocean County.
• Poverty rates among children increased significantly in the last decade: from 6.8% to 8.7% in Monmouth County and from 10.4% to 19.2% in Ocean County.
• Of all households receiving emergency food in Monmouth and Ocean Counties, almost half (45%) of households with children experienced hunger during the course of the year.

Stop & Shop donates over $12 million in product and financial support to individual food banks. In addition to the Turkey Express program, Stop & Shop continues to fight hunger through the Food for Friends campaign, which will raise more than $1 million this year for more than 300 local hunger relief organizations through the six states that it operates in.