“We’re really excited,” said Kristy Teisher, founder of Eat Share.

The event will feature a build your own bar for hotdogs and hamburgers and picnic favorites, such as salads and chips, as well as attractions including Pfirman’s Face Painting, fire truck tours with the Pennsdale Volunteer Fire Department, a snow cone station, visits with the farm’s animals and more.

“This is going to be a great summer day that families can come to for free, and we’re really happy to be able to provide this to the community,” she said.

Additionally, the event will serve as a debut pie baking contest for Eat Share.

Photo provided/Kelly Mifsud, Kelly Ann M Photography

“We’re inviting anyone who’s interested to prepare one homemade pie, and they do have to be present to win because we want them to be able to show off their pie and explain what they made,” Teisher said.

This is the third community meal for Eat Share, following a Thanksgiving-style meal in November at the Today Farm and a ham dinner in May at the Muncy Masonic Lodge.

Teisher, a hospital social worker, first got the idea for the nonprofit in December 2021 after a patient at her hospital expressed concern over his ability to eat, following a slip on ice that broke his dominant arm.

“He lived alone in a second floor apartment and didn’t drive, so he had to walk to the grocery store and carry his groceries home,” she explained.

Nearing the height of the Omicron variant of COVID, many organizations that Teisher reached out to were unable to help at that time. It was then that Teisher took it upon herself to cook up some meals for the patient and deliver them to him herself.

Photo provided/Kelly Mifsud, Kelly Ann M Photography

“From there, I recruited some co-workers to help prepare and deliver meals, and I started a spreadsheet and started advertising on Facebook. And it just sort of grew from there,” she explained.

“I was delivering to some local seniors. I love to cook, and we often have too much, so that was another way that I was able to pilot the process with some of my own neighbors and I got really great feedback, especially from our local seniors who were living alone and they just no longer felt that there was a big need to make meals,” she explained.

Eat share officially became a 501C3 registered nonprofit in February of 2023, and currently serves Lycoming, Northumberland, Union and Snyder counties, and is always open to expanding, given that they have a strong enough volunteer presence.

“We’ll never offer meals somewhere where we don’t have a pretty good number of volunteers available because we try to never have to say no to a request,” Teisher said.

Unlike many social programs, there are no qualifications or preconditions that would prevent someone from receiving a meal from Eat Share.

“The only questions we ask is family size, so we make sure we bring enough of course location and any food or meal restrictions, allergies, dietary needs, because we also want to make sure that we’re bringing people food that they can enjoy food that’s healthy for them,” Teisher said.

“We actually have a dietician that is a member of our board of directors, named Leeann Hessler, who works for UPMC Muncy, and we always defer to her if someone’s interested in making a meal, but they’re not familiar with how to meet the needs of someone who is diabetic or who is maybe on a liquid diet because you know of recent medical issues,” she said.

When a request for a meal is received, an email is sent to volunteers close to the request, and those interested can choose to take up the request, though Teisher stresses that with a volunteer pool of 193, they are not locked into a particular level of commitment.

In 2023, Eat Share served 30 families, totaling 80 individuals, and so far, in 2024, they have served 96 families, delivering 178 meals.

What makes their work even more incredible is the fact that Eat Share is entirely donor-based.

“What that means is we haven’t received any grants like some of the other local nonprofits that do food service might receive,” Teisher explained.

“Largely, when our volunteers sign up and agree to do a meal they are purchasing those ingredients themselves,” she said, though sometimes gift cards are offered to help lighten that cost.

“We have a program called Food Forward that is meant to reduce food waste while addressing food insecurity,” Teisher explained.

The program partners with restaurants, grocery stores and caterers to provide any leftover food to Eat Share to redistribute it to individuals and families in the community who are open to being notified whenever we have something available,” she explained.

For Teisher, as a social worker, the need throughout the community is what continues to drive her passion.

“I really want to see the stigma change around the idea of what it means to be in need,” she said.

“Because most people are just one bad day away from really needing the help of someone else and being able to ask for that help take so much courage, and we really want we really want to highlight that and be able to be able to just show that there are innovative ways that we can help our neighbors and we don’t have to put any shame around that,” she said.

“We welcome anyone who wants to join us,” Teisher said.

“I try to keep our volunteers in their own communities when they’re delivering, and so many have responded, ‘oh my goodness, that meal recipient lives just down the road, and I told them if they need anything, to let me know, now that we know each other,’ so building that community and bringing people in touch with their own neighbors just fills my heart,” Teisher said.

Those interested in receiving a meal or volunteering with the organization are encouraged to visit www.eatshare.org or reach out to eatsharelove@yahoo.com.