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Ellen Rabin is the New SSKP Director

Although she returned to Old Lyme to be near her 89-year old mother, the move had an unexpected and exciting upside: Ellen Rabin was selected to follow Patty Dowling as the new executive director of the Shoreline Soup Kitchen & Pantries (SSKP), a non-profit organization that serves the shoreline from its home offices in Old Saybrook.

Ellen has a life-long personal connection to Old Lyme and the shoreline area and a career working for non-profit organizations. Although she has lived in Los Angeles for the past 30 years, she grew up in West Hartford and spent summers at the family home in Old Lyme. It’s that Old Lyme house that her mother now calls home.

“I came from a job where I was the director of development for Meals on Wheels in Santa Monica, California,” Ellen explains.

During the 30 years she was in Los Angeles, Ellen married and raised four children with her husband; 10 years ago, she and her husband divorced, spurring her to return to full-time non-profit work. Ellen holds a master’s degree in public administration and working in the non-profit sector is in her wheelhouse.

Ellen initially took posts where she raised funds for cancer research and then to help autistic children, but it was when she started a job in development for a Meals on Wheels program that she realized she had found a charity with which she really connected.

“Everyone can relate to food insecurity—it’s an issue and a need that everyone understands,” Ellen says.

Ellen says her passion for fighting food insecurity was nurtured by two inspirational female role models: Sister Alice, who ran St. Vincent’s Meals on Wheels program in L.A., and Rosemary Regulbuto, an actor’s wife and “a classy woman” who ran about town devoted to helping raise funds and visibility for the Meals on Wheels cause.

“I had two wonderful role models who taught me how to do this charitable work with joy and passion,” Ellen says.

Ellen started as SSKP executive director in July. Since that time, she’s been visiting all of the organization’s meal sites and food pantries and getting to know all of the many volunteers on whom the continued success of the program relies.

“The network of faith communities [that host SSKP meal sites and pantries] is the foundation of the organization. They give us the sites, the volunteers, [and] allow us to have our equipment in their buildings,” Ellen says. “I have met some amazing volunteers who have dedicated years to these meal sites. I give Patty Dowling a lot of credit. It was wonderful to learn that the SSKP [she built] was a sustainable, solid organization and that I just have to keep the train running.”

More than 900 volunteers contribute their time and talents to make the SSKP pantries and meal sites a success.

There are nine meal sites: United Church of Chester, Baptist Church of Essex, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex, Grace Episcopal Church in Old Saybrook, United Methodist Church in Clinton, Deep River Congregational Church in Deep River, Trinity Lutheran Church in Centerbrook, First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, and Westbrook Congregational Church in Westbrook. Volunteers prepare and serve meals to guests at each site.

SSKP also has five food pantries where those struggling to make ends meet—the working poor and the elderly and disabled on fixed incomes—can shop for groceries at no cost each week. Each of the five pantries is open one day each week; guests can visit one pantry per week for enough food to make three meals for three days for each member of their household.

The core of the food offered at SSKP pantries and served at meal sites is donated, either by members of faith communities, individuals, businesses, and through food drives. Funds donated to SSKP help support the purchase of the meal and to buy fresh produce in the winter when community gardens are not active. During the growing season, these community gardens supply donated fresh vegetables and herbs for SSKP’s food pantries and meal sites: Common Good Gardens in Old Saybrook, Food for All Garden in Clinton, St. Mary’s Church Garden in Clinton, St. Ann’s piscopal Church Garden in Old Lyme, and Partner to Grow Garden at the Valley Shore YMCA in Westbrook.

In 2016, the Shoreline Soup Kitchen provided 1,073,906 meals, received food donations from all sources—food drives, community gardens, and businesses—worth $584,000, and had 7,949 people registered to shop at one of the SSKP food pantries.

As generous as the community’s food donations are each year, SSKP still needs to raise funds to supplement them. The funds raised are used to buy the protein portions for meal sites and pantries and to buy fresh vegetables in the winter months when community gardens are not producing.

“We spend a lot of money to buy food for the pantries and meal sites, especially in the winter months,” Ellen says.

The five SSKP food pantries are the Clinton Pantry at First Church of Christ (open on Wednesday from 5:45 to 7:45 p.m.), Westbrook Pantry at St. Mark’s R.C. Church (open on Tuesday from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.), Old Saybrook Pantry (open on Tuesday from 3 to 5 p.m.), East Lyme Pantry at St. John’s Episcopal Church (open on Thursday, from 5 to 6 p.m.), and Old Lyme Pantry at First Congregational Church (open on Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m.).

Most other food pantries in the state, including the Connecticut Food Bank, Foodshare, and Gemma Moran, are open just once a month; SSKP has pantries open once a week per guest. Each guest registers by town to participate. Ellen notes that guests are not means-tested: If they register, then they qualify to shop at a food pantry.

When guests arrive at a pantry, they show their grocery card (to get one, they just need to register by town) and then volunteers use a ribbon to color-code his or her grocery cart; the code indicates how many people are in the guest’s household and therefore, how much food the guest can receive. Which groceries each guest puts in their cart is up to them. As Ellen explained, the new model for food pantries is based on choice, allowing the guests to choose the items themselves.

“Raising money to feed people is such a wonderful cause. It’s a pleasure to devote my energy and experience to it,” Ellen says.

To donate non-perishable food items to stock SSKP’s food pantries and for meal sites or provide cash donations to help SSKP buy food in the winter months, visit www.shorelinesoupkitchens.org or call 860-388-1988 to learn more.