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02/07/2018 07:30 AMMarla Bogaert’s first association with the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries (SSKP) came through her then young son. His Cub Scout troop was helping at a meal site and she came along. Now, that cub scout—her son William—is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, planning on medical school, and Marla, an Essex resident, is a board member and treasurer of SSKP.
SSKP serves 11 towns: Essex, Chester, Deep River, Lyme, Old Lyme, East Lyme, Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Clinton, Killingworth, and Madison. The organization, one of the groups that makes up the Shoreline Basic Needs Task Force, served more than 22,000 hot meals last year at its five meal sites in local churches; provided an additional 17,000 ready-to-go heat and eat meals to people without adequate kitchen facilities; and provided some 8,000 people with food from nine pantry sites, open on different days during the week.
Counting the meals made from provisions at food pantries, SSKP estimates it provided more than one million meals last year. Each guest, as SSKP patrons are called, is entitled to take home from pantry sites enough food for three days for each person in the family.
SSKP has no means test for its guests, nor any requirement that guests live in one of the towns. Some of the food that it distributes is donated; in the summer, garden volunteers grow produce that SSKP distributes at pantries.
SSKP is hosting its annual meeting on Monday, Feb. 12, at the First Church of Christ Scientist, 366 Main Street in Old Saybrook. The featured speaker will be Rev. Erica Wimber Avena, formerly pastor of the first Baptist Church in Essex, who, with her congregation, founded SSKP 29 years ago.
For SSKP, 2017 was not only a year that saw the organizations services continue to expand, it was also a year that saw a new executive director. After 15 years, Patty Dowling stepped down and Ellen Rabin is now the head of the organization, which operates with an extremely small paid staff (mostly part-time) and a large group of more than 900 local volunteers.
Marla notes that sometimes the line between guests and volunteers is difficult to draw. At meal sites, guests who have come to eat sometimes stay as volunteers to help clean up.
“The truth is that before I got involved [in SSKP] I wasn’t aware that there was a large group of people who struggle and I still don’t think a lot of people realize that,” says Marla, who grew up in Old Saybrook. “I was amazed to learn the magnitude of the need.”
In addition to serving on the board, Marla is an active volunteer, cooking dinner on a regular schedule at the Deep River meal site with volunteers from Essex Savings Bank, of which she is an assistant vice president. The volunteers plan the menu to be served.
“It’s usually a casserole-type thing, chicken or hamburger, with salad, vegetables and desert. A lot of emails go back and forth when we’re planning,” she says.
She adds that the cooking team provides the food for the meal they prepare.
SSKP had donations last year of $861,092 in addition to more than $500,000 in donated food. The money comes from individuals, community groups, corporations, and foundations. None of it comes from government funds, whether local, state, or federal.
“It’s mind boggling that the organization raises this much without any government funds,” Marla says.
When the food bank started, the long-term goal, Marla says, was a paradox.
“We wanted to exist so that someday we could go out of existence,” she says. “But we’re probably not going to realize that goal. We need to look for funding well out into to the future so we can continue to exist.”
Marla started working in a bank as a part-time job in high school. Her mother suggested she might get a job at Chester Bank, where her grandfather Bud Bush had once been president.
“She told me to go see if they would hire me,” Marla recalls.
The building that housed Chester Bank still stands on Chester’s Main Street, and is now the site of a restaurant. Marla worked at the bank on vacations while she was a student, graduating from the University of Connecticut with a major in mathematics and a minor in economics.
“I found that math came easily to me,” she recalls.
Marla’s has lived her whole life in the lower Connecticut River Valley, with the exception of a stint at the University of New Hampshire before she transferred back to the University of Connecticut.
“I never thought I’d leave. My family is here,” she says.
She is married to John Bogaert, one of the principals of Bogaert Construction in Essex. The two met when a friend of hers fixed them up on a blind date. In addition to their son, the Bogaerts have a daughter, Julia, now a freshman at the University of New Hampshire.
She and John have long been community volunteers. In addition to SSKP, she has served on the board of the Essex Library, of which her husband is now a board member.
“You know how it is; you volunteer, your name gets out there,” she says. “Honestly, being involved with the soup kitchen, they are a wonderful group and you really feel uplifted when you see how you are helping people and you realize you can make a difference,” she says. “And volunteering is a really nice way to meet people.”
Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries: Annual Meeting
The Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries (SSKP) holds its annual meeting on Monday, Feb. 12, at the First Church of Christ, 366 Main Street, Old Saybrook. The evening starts at 6 p.m. with food and fellowship; the program begins at 7 p.m. and features SSKP founder Rev. Erica Wimber Avena as guest speaker. For more information or to RSVP, call 860-388-1988 or email nbecker@shorelinesoupkitchens.org. To volunteer or donate to SSKP, visit www.shorelinesoupkitchens.org.