My Story

I was born in Palestine in 1936. My father was killed when I was four years old. He was gardening — a safe activity you’d suppose. Well, not during wars: a bomb was dropped on our neighborhood as part of the Second World War. Thereafter, I lived a life of hunger and poverty until I married at age 22. Luckily, I was resourceful and, overcoming a learning disability, was able to attend college, earn a BA and then a masters in social work. A few years later, I attended Cornell University, completing a Ph.D. in Human Service Studies. In time, my husband Aaron and I created two lovely people — a daughter and son.

During the years with my mother, we lived in small apartments in poor residential neighborhoods. I felt lonely and isolated in my small two-person family! Once married, my husband and I lived for the most part in those lovely, little “self-contained units” that populate suburban, middle class neighborhoods. We knew and related to few of our neighbors. Friends lived far away, and planning was required to see each other. The children socialized through play dates. One would not call this arrangement easy-going or natural!

During holidays I wished I had a community with which to share these  special times. As Chanukah or Christmas approached — or Passover or  Easter, or New Year’s Eve — I’d worry that we’d be by ourselves and  not with a group of our friends. We were distant with our relatives.

I knew from my academic studies in human interaction, sociology and anthropology that human beings are meant to live in tribes. We’d lived that way until the industrial revolution. Despite my repeated efforts to find a suitable community for our family, I was unsuccessful until 1991. That’s when my friend, Joan Bokaer, returned from a march across America — her “March for a Livable World” — burning with a vision to create a demonstration model community. Her dream was that they could live a comfortable life, care for each other and our Mother Earth while building homes and conserving land, living in, creating, and modeling a sustainable life style for others to emulate.

The effort to realize Joan’s vision is recounted, in part, in the book EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture by EVI’s co-founder, Liz Walker. Our planning stretched over five years before construction began on the cluster of 30 homes and a common house that comprised our first cohousing neighborhood. A second cohousing neighborhood has followed, and a third is in the planning. The three neighborhoods when completed will use only 12 acres of the 176-acre site. A 13 acre organic farm was part of the original plan; in 2005, another 5 acres was dedicated to an organic berry farm. The balance of the land is includes ponds, meadows and woods which will be left mostly to nature. An education center is in the planning to house the active nonprofit which currently operates out of the common house. Housing for interns is also being considered.

The years following our move to EcoVillage have been dynamic and exciting. We live in a beautiful small home with passive solar design. Three meals per week are served in the common house for those who opt to participate. All holidays are celebrated in the common house. Special events like birthdays, parties and other celebrations are shared with neighbors and friends. I have found here the sense of community I so missed before I moved and wish my children had the luck to live here. However, as I get older, now 71 years old, I find that there are fewer people to interact with at Ecovillage. Thus, elder co-housing looks increasingly more attractive.

Friendship Donations Network

FDN is a food rescue program that came into being in response to my visit, 19 years ago, to a migrant labor camp where I encountered sub-standard living conditions and rampant hunger. In contrast, over the years, I observed the waste of thousands of pounds of all kinds of good, nutritious food: the daily discards of farms, schools, university dining halls, restaurants, supermarkets, bakeries and food wholesalers. I decided to do something about the problem.

Initially, I worked through an existing organization, the Migrant Advocacy Center, which would send a car or van, as needed, to pickup the surplus food I located. One supermarket responded to my “begging” with a once-a-week pickup. In 1991, a large supermarket chain in Ithaca, Wegman’s, agreed to help us daily, and I set about recruiting volunteers to help with the pick up, sorting and distribution of donations. The delivery of food to the labor camps remained the biggest and most frustrating piece of the puzzle. The Migrant Advocacy Center often found themselves short of money for gas, vehicles or volunteers, making that part of the outreach a “touch-and-go” affair until the agency folded.

The food, however, kept coming daily. Because it was fresh — and perishable — it had to be distributed within hours. I started a massive campaign to recruit reliable churches to host food pantries. I also looked for social service agencies that needed food for their programs; but here the match was often poor, as few agencies could use the 750 to 1000 pounds of food now being donated daily. A major publicity push helped inform members of the community about our work and mission, garner donations to cover costs for gas and packaging supplies, and recruit volunteers and food pantries sponsors. Our local newspapers covered our efforts and helped spread the word. Amazingly, it worked!

What started out taking 40 to 50 hours per week was soon overwhelming. Honestly, it was much more work and effort than I ever envisioned! But how could I quit now that I was succeeding and 6 supermarkets and bakeries daily were donating food and increasing numbers of people, churches and agencies were involved? Volunteers came and left, new ones were recruited. Churches opened pantries and closed them for many reasons and new ones were recruited. Our schedule was full as we had to pick up rescued food when the stores were open — seven days a week, 365 days per year. Closed Christmas!

Currently, FDN rescues 1500 to 2500 pounds of mostly fresh food daily — approximately 15,000 pounds per week and 750,000 pounds per years. The estimated value of the food — all of which is donated: FND has never paid one cent for any food — is in excess of $4,000 per day, $30,000 per week, or $1.5 to $2 million per year. Eleven supermarkets, bakeries and others donate daily; food wholesalers donate when food is available; local farms donate in season; Cornell Apple Orchards, farms and dairy stores donate regularly. Area farms donate when they have excess. Without FDN almost all this good, nutritious food would have ended up in landfills.

About 2500 to 3000 persons are helped weekly through the Friendship Donations Network. Twenty-eight hunger programs receive food on a regular basis. FDN provides food to a soup kitchen that feeds almost 800 persons weekly, to a Mission that provides food to hundreds in an impoverished rural county nearby, and to 11 food pantries in Ithaca and surrounding counties. Food deliveries also go to low-wage worksites; “shut ins,” youth programs; social agencies. and rural poor with no access to a food pantry.

To give you an idea of how the day-to-day operation plays out, let me describe a typical day, say Tuesday, which is hosted by the Immaculate Conception Church Pantry. Their coordinator and her volunteers set up the tables in the church basement to receive the food. Snacks are available for volunteers in the church kitchen. The pick-up runs begin at 9 AM: three volunteers arriving at our largest donor, Wegman’s, where 500 to 1000 pounds of food that is waiting on the loading dock; another volunteer travels to Ithaca Bakery for a 4x4x4 bin full of bakery items that have been waiting since the night before. Three other volunteers make the circuit of 8 other supermarkets and wholesalers. all donations are delivered to the church; volunteers wait to help the drivers unload, sort, package and set up the distribution. The public begins waiting in line 2 hours before the pantry opens at 1 PM. Folks sign in, and go through a 120 foot, U-shaped line of tables filled with food. Volunteers at each table guide and inform those in line about how much food they can take from each table. At 2pm, clean-up, recycling and reusing starts.

Finally, a word about FDN’s finances. We distribute $1.5 to $2 million worth of food each year. Our expenses — which cover transportation reimbursement, packaging supplies, cell phones and prepaid cards for essential volunteers — total about $4,400 per year. Not bad! Reason? No one is paid! Our 200-plus workers from participating churches and pantries are all volunteers. We have no overhead fixed costs! The operation is run out of my home, using our telephones, computers, printers, supplies and equipment. We own no vehicles! Every volunteer uses his/her own vehicle. We pay for no storage space (three storage sheds are donated by members of the community) and for no refrigeration (freezer space is donated by Purity Ice Cream Company and coolers, by a local farmer and the Ecovillage common house). Small grants from local funding sources and private donations triggered by local publicity usually cover the small cash requirements of the operation.

FDN efforts to alleviate food insecurity and hunger and to demonstrate how to do it have garnered national recognition. This past March, Sara Pines received the annual Laura Holmberg Award. from the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, which honors “women who, while excelling in their professions, have also had a significant impact on the community through their volunteer activities.” This past May, FDN and Sara Pines were given an e‑chievement award by Etown conferred in a national broadcast.