From the Community

Community Servings Awarded 10-Year Cummings Foundation Grant

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Community Servings is one of 30 local nonprofits sharing in $10 million in funding from Cummings Foundation. The Jamaica Plain-based organization will receive $333,300 over 10 years. Founded in 1990, Community Servings provides medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses. As medically tailored meal services are further integrated into patient-centered models of care, Community Servings expects to continue its rapid growth. “We are so grateful to the Cummings Foundation for this award and the $100,000 grant we received from them in June; it is an incredible demonstration of support of the healing power of food and our team’s mission to prepare and deliver nourishing meals,” said David Waters, CEO of Community Servings.

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From the Community

JP’s Community Servings Names Four to Board of Directors

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Jamaica Plain-based Community Servings recently announced the election of four new members to its Board of Directors. Community Servings is a nonprofit provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses. The new board members are:

• Dr. Aretha Delight Davis, a physician, former attorney, and CEO of ACP Decisions, a nonprofit that helps families make informed health care decisions;
• David Farwell, an executive vice president at Citizens Bank overseeing commercial banking, including the restaurant finance practice;
• Mehrdad Noorani, a former Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow and founding partner of the independent investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners; and
• Malisa Schuyler, vice president of government affairs at Beth Israel Lahey Health, an integrated healthcare system expanding access to care throughout Eastern Massachusetts. “Each of these individuals brings a wealth of experience and an abundance of passion to our Board of Directors,” said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings. “They will play a critical role not only as we continue to expand our services but also as we tackle the many challenges that Community Servings and the people we support have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The new board members began their leadership roles with the Community Servings Board of Directors on July 1.

2,698 Views
From the Community

Community Servings Promotes Director of Food Service Kevin Conner to COO

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Jamaica Plain nonprofit Community Servings recently announced the appointment of Kevin Conner as Chief Operating Officer. Community Servings provides medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses. In this newly resurrected and restructured role, Conner oversees the delivery department and all operations, including facilities, IT, and the Teaching Kitchen program that has been on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic and will relaunch with a social entrepreneurial element in 2021. Conner will also oversee COVID-19 safety measures to ensure that all staff, including those in the kitchen and making deliveries, are adequately equipped with PPE and adhere to social distancing guidelines. Conner joined the Community Servings team in 2012 as kitchen manager and later served as executive chef for five years.

1,887 Views
From the Community

Amid Rapid Growth, Community Servings Hires Meal Delivery Manager

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Community Servings, a Jamaica Plain-based nonprofit provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses, has appointed Devin Allston as Delivery Operations Manager. In this newly created role, Allston works closely with the kitchen team to ensure the timely delivery of healthy meals to clients across Massachusetts. Since March 1, the number of clients served by Community Servings has risen by 30 percent to 1,300, as medically tailored meal services continue to be integrated into new patient-centered models of care. The agency has also increased its meal production by 50 percent since the start of the pandemic. “Our organization has experienced tremendous growth this year, and we’re working to meet the increased need by investing in people with the right skills to help us deliver nutritious meals to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses,” said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings.

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From the Community

JP’s Community Servings Awarded COVID-19 Relief Grant

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Community Servings was one of 10 programs to receive a COVID-19 Relief Fund Grant from Alkermes. The special grant is focused on addressing pandemic-related needs of people living with addiction, serious mental illness, or cancer. More than 350 applications were submitted in May 2020 for this highly competitive program. Collectively, the programs receiving grants reach across Alkermes’ therapeutic focus areas and seek to serve populations that span ethnic, socio-economic, gender, and age spectrums, utilizing a variety of approaches targeted to the acute challenges presented by COVID-19, including: peer-support programs; innovative technologies, formats and channels to expand access to and reach of essential nonprofit programming; creative approaches to bolster crisis response; and provision of essentials such as food, housing, and career support. Alkermes is a biopharmaceutical company. “As stay-at-home orders took effect across the U.S., we reached out to understand how efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19 were impacting people living with addiction, serious mental illness, or cancer,” said Richard Pops, Chief Executive Officer of Alkermes.

2,068 Views
From the Community

Community Servings Makes 9 Millionth Meal

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Community Servings has reached a milestone in its mission of providing nourishing, scratch-made meals to people living in Massachusetts with critical and chronic illnesses, who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves: 9 million meals made. The Jamaica Plain-based nonprofit organization, founded in 1990, has experienced major growth over the past year as medically tailored meal services have been integrated into new patient-centered models of care, expanding the agency’s reach across the commonwealth. More recently, the COVID-19 outbreak has prompted a surge in need for healthy food sources among the most vulnerable in the community. “Community Servings has risen to the challenge presented by the pandemic by growing our client services, kitchen and meal delivery teams, and ramping up our scratch-made meal preparation by 40 percent to help feed hundreds of hungry neighbors in Boston each week,” said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings. “Our work – not only in response to COVID-19 but throughout our 30-year history – would not be possible without the many individual donors, corporations and private foundations that have supported us, along with help from public sector partners like the city of Boston.”

While the agency anticipated growing into its recently expanded, 31,000-square-foot Food Campus with a steady ramp-up over the next five years, Community Servings is now using all available cooking and packaging space to allow for workplace social distancing and to address the sharp increase in demand for meals.

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Business

For Employers: Reverse Job Fair for Jamaica Plain Food Bizs on March 19

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Boston area food establishments are short on staff and employees. But a new tactic, a reverse job fair being hosted by JP Centre/South Main Streets and Community Servings, is aiming to alleviate the employee shortage. At the reverse job fair employers visit tables while prospective employees are at the tables with their credentials, examples of their training, and have the opportunity to talk to possible employers. All prospective employees are graduates of the Community Servings' Job Training Program, a 12-week job training program designed for people interested in food service careers, but faced barriers to employments such as reentry, recovery, mental health, and homelessness. Click here to learn more about the job training program.

1,643 Views
From the Community

Community Servings Expands ‘Teaching Kitchen’ Job Training Program with $300,000 Grant from The Boston Foundation

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Community Servings, a nonprofit provider in Jamaica Plain of medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses, recently announced the expansion of its programs with the support of a $300,000 grant from The Boston Foundation. The Teaching Kitchen program will now hold six 12-week courses for up to 72 trainees per year, an increase from four sessions per year. The free, hands-on training takes place in Community Servings’ new Learning Kitchen, created as part of the organization’s recently completed $25 million renovation and expansion project. As they learn food preparation and cooking skills, trainees also help Community Servings’ culinary staff prepare medically tailored meals that are delivered daily to clients. “When our 45th Teaching Kitchen class graduates in February, we’ll have trained more than 400 individuals who turned to Community Servings because they were interested in careers in the food service industry but faced barriers to full-time employment,” said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings.

3,092 Views
From the Community

Community Servings Completes $25 Million Renovation and Expansion Project

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Community Servings, a nonprofit provider of medically tailored meals and nutrition services to individuals and families living with critical and chronic illnesses, celebrated the completion of a $25 million kitchen expansion and three-story addition project at its longtime home in Jamaica Plain.  

With the opening of a 31,000-square-foot food campus, Community Servings plans to double the number of people involved in its volunteer programs and triple production of its scratch-made meals. The nonprofit is now well-positioned to expand its service footprint statewide and will soon begin feeding even more critically and chronically ill individuals and their families across Massachusetts. Community Servings is now prepared to meet new demand from a state-led initiative that will provide health-related nutrition supports to certain patients beginning in January 2020. “For 30 years, we’ve been focused on bringing nutritious, scratch-made, medically tailored meals to our neighbors in need.

3,469 Views
Business

Cervone Deegan & Associates Raised $1,000 for Community Servings’ Pie In The Sky

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Local company Cervone Deegan & Associates went from selling real estate to pies this past weekend at City Feed for a good cause. In total, $1,100 was raised for local Jamaica Plain nonprofit Community Servings. Thirty-six pies were sold, and several donations were provided to Community Servings' Pie In The Sky 27th Annual Thanksgiving Bake Sale. Every year restaurants, bakeries, caterers, and hotels donate thousands of pies that 500 volunteers such as Cervone, Deegan & Associates then sell to family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. The money goes to provide thousands of medically tailored, made-from-scratch meals for individuals and families who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves from Community Servings.

1,463 Views