By Hayleigh Gowans

Staff Writer

Fayetteville-Manlius High School senior Stephanie O’Malley has been busy the past few summers for a good cause. As the leader and creator of FM Fresh Meals, O’Malley has spent countless hours gathering volunteers to pick fresh produce to benefit F-M Community Outreach and Food Pantry.

In the two years it’s been running, the organization that has provided more than 2,000 pounds of fresh produce to the food pantry.

“Fresh produce is expensive and something that low-income families might not be able to afford. When you think about the canned alternative, fresh produce is something that is very beneficial for a healthy diet,” said O’Malley.

O’Malley said she got involved in volunteering for local food pantries through Girl Scouts, having done a Silver Award project that encouraged residents to plant extra rows of seeds in their personal gardens for local food pantries.

At the end of her sophomore year, O’Malley was brainstorming ideas for her Gold Award when she thought of a way to incorporate a non-profit she had learned of through her church, Matthew 25 Farm, into her project.

Matthew 25 Farm is a non-profit with locations Vesper and LaFayette with the mission to “work to ensure that no Central New Yorker goes without fresh produce.” The way the farm works is that donors buy seeds for produce that can be grown locally and volunteers plant and cultivate these to allow non-profits throughout the community to harvest fresh foods and vegetables to distribute to those who are in need of it.

Produce that has been harvested at Matthew 25 Farms for FM Fresh Meals over the past few years include peas, raspberries, green beans, squash, tomatoes, corn, potatoes and onions, said O’Malley. In the summer of 2015, volunteers picked about 830 pounds of produce, and a whopping 1,200 pounds was picked this past summer.

“It was phenomenal,” said Linda Napier, director of F-M Community Outreach and Food Pantry. “We provide families with about 1,600 cans of produce per month. For people to be able to get fresh produce to supplement canned foods makes a world of a difference … Everyone was so excited.”

Napier and O’Malley worked together to line up the harvest weekends, of which there were six or seven per summer, during the busier times of the month for the food pantry. This program was also very beneficial for Napier because she is able to stretch the supplement produce grant the pantry receives during other months of the year, she said.

Before going into the first summer, O’Malley got in contact with the F-M Science Honor Society advisor Ben Gnacik, a science teacher at F-M High School. A requirement for the honor society is that students must log 17 service hours per year.

“Science and harvesting really go hand-in-hand,” said O’Malley. “I wanted to work with Mr. Gnacik to ensure the program would continue because as long as the students need to log service house, we should have a pool of people to volunteer.”

For the future, O’Malley said she hopes to become a physician’s assistant because of her enjoyment of helping others. Additionally, she has taken a younger student under her wing who will take over organizing the program after she graduates.

“I’ve taken away so much from this experience,” O’Malley said. “I’ve realized I like helping other and I would like to continue to help out food pantries as I can.”

People are encouraged to donate both non-perishable and fresh foods to the F-M Community Outreach, which has drop-off hours on Monday morning. To learn more about F-M Community Outreach and Food Pantry, call 682-3688.

To learn more about the FM Fresh Meals program, go to facebook.com/faymanfreshmeals. To learn more about Matthew 25 Farm, go to matthew25farm.com.