Trenton Plates, The World Takes fights food insecurity in the city and world

From Camden and Cherry Hill to Trenton and the Jersey Shore, what about life in New Jersey do you want WHYY News to cover? Let us know.

Since 2021, Cross Community Inc., a faith-based Trenton organization, and Rise Against Hunger, a nonprofit that fights hunger by targeting communities facing high rates of food insecurity, have been waging a war against hunger.

This year, they are upping the ante at the annual meal-packaging event, Trenton Plates, The World Takes, and aiming to surpass the number of meals and food they collect in comparison to previous years. The event will take place on Sept. 24 at the Cure Arena in Trenton.

Last year, more than 800 volunteers gathered to pack more than 120,000 meals fortified with 20 essential vitamins and nutrients that contained rice, soy and dehydrated vegetables, organizers said. The meals helped feed people impacted by hunger in the Philippines and South Sudan, said Stone Powell-McDavitt, partnership manager for Rise Against Hunger. This year, organizers have raised the bar, with a goal to serve more than 285,000 meals and collect more than 3,000 pounds of food to help combat food insecurity in Trenton and around the world.

“We were really proud of what we did last year, but we knew that we could do more,  just given how many people showed out in such a short amount of time,” said Jasmine Ross, executive director of Cross Community, who serves on the board of Cross Community Inc., with her parents, Rob and Tracy Ross.

Trenton Plates, The World Takes 2024 was a hit, organizers said

“So we are hoping to bring out 1,500 people this year and to gather way over the 2,000 pounds of food that we collected for the local organizations last year,” she said. “So that’s really the main difference between last year and this year’s event, is just the volume.”

Last year, local schools, fraternities, sororities, faith-based organizations and nonprofit organizations were recruited to volunteer at the event. Participants packaged meals in three-hour shifts which began at 7 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m. While they worked, a DJ spun the latest tunes.

“We were all walking around and encouraging them, making them laugh,” Ross said. “I can say Peter Bullock, our board chair, was kind of like the hype man of the day before the shift started, getting the crowds going, getting everybody excited for what we were gonna do. I think, for me anyway, that was intentional. Our family was raised with service kind of at the forefront, and I think doing an event like this, you can show people that being of service can be fun. It doesn’t have to be a stuffy affair.”

Powell-McDavitt, of Rise Against Hunger, said last year’s meal event far exceeded expectations.

“About a little over 1,300 children will have an entire year’s worth of meals in school feeding programs in small communities due to the event that we’re hosting in September, but what people can expect at this event is high energy, good music [and] a great time to spend with people from all over the Trenton community,” she said.

What do Trenton Plates, The World Takes do?

In addition to fighting worldwide food insecurity, Rise Against Hunger also “partners with local leaders to implement sustainable agriculture and income-generating projects that support long-term solutions to food security while empowering communities to thrive and become self-reliant.” According to the organization, about 673 million people around the world face hunger. At food packaging events such as the one in Trenton, the organization provides an event facilitator to manage the event, provide hunger education and supply all necessary ingredients and materials.

“This year, we already knew [where] the venue was going to be [and] we knew a little bit of a scheme of what we’re going to do differently and how we’re going to fill that gap,” said Kenneth Austin, Cross Community Inc. board treasurer and Trenton Plates, The World Takes coordinator. Austin, a Trenton native, said the idea to create the volunteer event stemmed from an experience he had on a mission trip with his church in North Carolina when he was in middle school, and that he and the Cross Community board members planned and executed last year’s event within three months.

“What I found is that there are a lot of people out there in the community just waiting to be asked to volunteer to do something meaningful for their community, and once we started putting it out there, people got excited and they started passing it along to other people,” said Cross Community Vice President Rob Ross.

“I think one of the new things that will also be, we’re really trying to work with to bring some of those local entities out to the event so that people are more aware of where and how they can help locally,” said Cross Community Board President Tracy Ross, who wanted to emphasize the local charities who also benefit from the volunteer event.

Last year, local organizations such as the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and Arm and Arm benefited from the 2,000 pounds of food that was collected at the event.

For more information or to sign up to volunteer for this year’s Trenton Plates, the World Takes event, click here.

WHYY News is partnering with independent journalists across New Jersey to spotlight the people, communities, cultures and distinctive places that shape the Garden State. This work is made possible with support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.