Changing lives, one meal at a time
By Ciara McCann
Most kids look forward to the last day of school and their homework-free months of summer fun. Most kids, that is, except the economically disadvantaged. When you don’t have enough money for food, the end of school can also mean hunger for many. In fact, most people don’t know that 30 percent of inner-city children go to bed hungry.
One man, Pastor Charles Muller, has tried to fix that. After reading an article 13 years ago that some kids dread summer because it means they will go without the subsidized lunches provided by schools, he packed 25 lunches and brought them to Livingston Park in Albany to see what would happen.
“They were all gone in about five minutes,” said Muller, a former volunteer at a detention home for boys in the Berkshires. He explored other parks in the city of Albany and spoke to workers who said kids rummage through the garbage looking for food.
After a few months of delivering lunches, Muller got to know the kids. Unfortunately, though, some of them would end up in trouble with drugs and gangs; a few were even killed.
That prompted him to take his original lunch idea a step further. “I decided we needed to go to the city so we could stay consistent in the kids’ lives. This is where the violence is, this is where we needed to be. We want to get children off the streets and give them a good meal.”
With the help of fundraisers and government programs like the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program, Muller started the J.C. Club Children’s Feeding Center in 1995, located in Arbor Hill, a notoriously dangerous section of Albany.
The Center is open seven days a week and averages between 80 and 100 kids a day. “It was bigger than we were,” said Muller. Once the school year started back up and the kids began receiving subsidized lunches again, meals were limited to weekends and days off from school. Children between the ages of six and 14 are served, but on holidays and special occasions, those up to age 19 are also served. The meals consist of 100 percent juice, sandwiches, fruit, vegetables and a snack.
“There is a standard of excellence we uphold [with the meal],” Muller said. “They are very nutritional so the kids get energy and can really be sustained for the whole day.”
Kids can choose to get off the street and enjoy a meal in the center, or they can receive meals in local parks. Muller and his staff of volunteers (which includes recipients of the meals, community members and Boy Scouts) deliver to 10 parks throughout the city (Ridgefield Park, Livingston, Upper and Lower Lincoln Parks, Swinburne and Morris Street Park, to name a few), where approximately 100 kids are fed. Meals are delivered in a custom ambulance, complete with air conditioning and coolers to keep the lunches fresh.
Around the same time that he started the Center, Muller also started the Victory Christian Church located right next to the feeding center. He also hosts his own radio show and runs programs at the Center such as “What’s my Identity?”, which teaches kids how to make a difference in their life and the lives of those around them.
Muller’s goal is to help kids learn how to gravitate towards the good kids and stay away from those who can get them in trouble. “They can have whatever identity they can create for themselves,” he said.
The job is a family affair for Muller, whose wife and two teenage daughters also help out. It’s fulfilling work, but can be hard on his family life, because of the many early morning and late night hours it requires.
“My wife and daughters have given up every summer. We don’t go anywhere or have vacations; we wake up on a mission. To me, it’s just my life.”
All of his efforts have not gone unrecognized. Muller recently received a $10,000 award from the CVS “For All the Ways You Care” contest for the work he’s done in Albany. He’s also won a Fleet Bank Award and a Jefferson Award honoring his community service.
“I don’t look for what I can get out of it,” he said. “If I can steer one of these kids in another direction, away from gangs and violence, and put something into them other than food, it’s worth it.”
Whether he intended to or not, Muller has become a public figure in the area.
“I can walk anywhere in the city and people know me,” he said. “The kids come up and give me a hug and say ‘Thank You’.”
New Center
With the success of the first center, Muller decided to open a second, larger center at 25 Warren Street in downtown Albany. The project, in the works for the past six years, is set to open by July 1st.
Aside from providing meals, it will hold 300 people – opposed to 120 at the old building – provide clothing, a resource center and new programs.
“We’re trying to take the next step in helping the kids,” said Pastor Charles Muller. This includes having dental and medical services available, offering baking and dance classes, and eventually a “Hip Hop Church” to better relate to the youth. They will also accept donations of new and used clothing,
Community response to the center has been welcoming and appreciative.