'Coming back home': Red Bank's Lunch Break reopens expanded headquarters, offering more
RED BANK - Lunch Break, the Red Bank nonprofit that provides free hot meals, clothing and life skills, has reopened its 121 Drs. James Parker Blvd. building. The charity’s expansion allows room for its life skills program to relocate from 648 Broad St. in Shrewsbury to its headquarters.
It also added a shower and laundry area as well as more storage space, according to the nonprofit’s Board of Trustee president Juanita Lewis.
“We are so excited about the possibility of offering the type of assistance to the community that will both inspire and impower those to self-sufficiency,” Lewis said.
Executive Director Gwendolyn Love said the nonprofit provides wraparound services that include hot lunches, a food pantry, clothing, college counseling, health and wellness programs and life skills, which provides a range of assistance, including job interview preparation.
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“The expansion is more than just a building,” Love said. “It really is a home for the community.”
The nonprofit also can connect clients with other nonprofit resources and address housing needs.
“We feel like it’s a community center that brings people together,” Love said. “They get to experience the fellowship and community.”
Jill Gwydir-Govel, who was part of the capital campaign committee, said the nonprofit raised $12 million. During the two years of construction, the nonprofit ran its operations out of a number of locations including churches.
“When we came back, the building was all done,” Gwydir-Govel said. “It was like coming back home.”
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The expanded building reopens with a mural by Leon Rainbow and Jose Bustamante. The street outside Lunch Break has also been renamed Norma Todd Way, after its founder.
Dr. Carol Penn, a member of the board of trustees, said Todd, “would just keep speaking this vision of what it means to learn wherever you are and what it means to be centered in a love that drives humanity forward and would keep driving humanity forward until all our parts of humanity could be touched by unconditional love.”
Penn said Todd believed in helping those with the greatest needs. Todd’s husband James worked in the U.S. Department of State.
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Penn remembers, “She said, ‘I don’t want the assignments in Europe. Those were the easy assignments. I wanted the assignments in the countries where there were people who were struggling, where there were people who were considered the untouchables of the world. This is where I can learn.’”
Todd, who passed away in 2008 at 87, then took those lessons and brought them back to Red Bank, Penn said.
Todd’s daughter Coralie Todd praised the staff and volunteers who have worked at the nonprofit’s 41 years of existence.
“I know my mother’s smiling now,” Todd said.
Olivia Liu is a reporter covering transportation, Red Bank and western Monmouth County. She can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Red Bank's Lunch Break reopens at expanded facility
