Pastor Jeannie Settembre
Dear Val and the Sparta Community Food Pantry!
Although I always try very hard to convey my deepest appreciation for you and your incredible staff, my words are so inadequate to express how instrumental you are in feeding the hundreds of homeless people and those living in shelters that our ministry serves.
I hope you are truly blessed by the fact that your efforts go way beyond the Sparta community and the surrounding areas. It flows onto the streets of the inner cities and under bridges where so many call home and are desperate for a touch of kindness, some food, and resources to provide some relief.
Your efforts to help us as we attempt to bring hope and solution to the desperate is indispensable. We just couldn’t do it without you. I want you to know that you are surely an instrument in the hands of the Lordto help us significantly impact hard core addiction, homelessness and much needed mental health intervention with long term care solutions. It’s the warm meals I our hands that signify our sincere love and concern for them and the Sparta Community Food Pantry plays a huge role in providing the food we need.
Thank you to all of you. May God bless you and continue to equip you as you do more for the needy than you will ever realize.
With much appreciation and gratitude,
Pastor Jeannie Settembre
Lights in the City Ministries
Judith Zelikoff, PhD
Professor, Environmental Medicine
Director, Community Outreach
NYU Global College of Public Health,
Associate Professor/Affiliated Faculty
Jill D. Aquino-RN, MS
To Whom It May Concern,
Over the summer of 2022, I had the honor of being hired as the Community Coordinator for NYU Medical School’s Environmental Medicine Division to work with the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan on a five- year grant (1R01ES033545-01) awarded by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). When I first started working with this tribe, it became abundantly clear to me that the Sparta Community Food Pantry (SCFP), a charitable organization, would play a key role in supporting the tribe throughout this grant. The Turtle Clan is suffering from food scarcity as a direct result of the Ford Motor Company’s disposal of numerous toxins from their Mahwah plant onto the Ramapough’s land back in the 1960’s-1970’s. The sole purpose of the grant is to restore food sovereignty among this environmentally- impacted and marginalized semi-urban Tribal Nation. In order to do this, community partners, such as the Sparta Community Food Pantry (SCFP), are an intricate part of this goal. The Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan can no longer live off their land through hunting, fishing, or farming because the soil is contaminated, the air and water are polluted, and the wildlife is diseased.
The SCFP makes a significant difference in the lives of this tribe currently and can for generations to come by providing a reliable source of food, especially during the winter season when crops from the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm in Sussex County are not available. Over the past seven months, SCFP’s actions have been most timely, providing PPE (personal protective equipment) and diapers for the tribe’s farmers markets that had started in July, 2022. Every month since the summer’s end, they have provided reusable bags filled with non-perishable goods including canned soups and vegetables, peanut butter, boxed cereals, and rice. Frozen turkeys, an important source of protein for this tribal community were distributed by SCFP for Thanksgiving. Other healthy meals were forthcoming and had been made available to the tribe. Because of the toxicity of the water in their homes, members of the tribe especially appreciate the numerous bottles of water provided by SCFP. To preserve the culture of the Ramapough Lunaape, cooking classes were instituted, and SCFP donated the vegetables used for the recipes. SCFP supplied backpacks to tribal children at the onset of the 2022-23 school year. During the holiday season, toys were provided to add to the tribe’s needs and enjoyment.
SCFP’s mission states that they are “devoted to making the world a better place through various initiatives designed to help those in need.” I cannot stress enough how important the SCFP’s mission is to them and how they carry it out every single time they support this tribe through the many donations of perishable and non-perishable items on an on-going basis. I cannot think of a community who is more in need than the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan. Anushiik (Thank you in the Munsee Native American language).
Jill D. Aquino-RN, MS
Community Coordinator, Division of Environmental Medicine
Department of Medicine
NYU Grossman School of Medicine