Food Pantry To-Be Finds A Fresh Start

Marcus Harvin is working on a fresh start: for the food in his home community of Newhallville, and for formerly incarcerated people like himself who are looking to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them.

Enter Newhallville Fresh Start: a food pantry he’s in the process of founding to provide healthy produce and, eventually, programming for neighbors in need.

Harvin talked through those plans, and his own life story, Monday night during a group strategizing session held in the spacious rooms of the New Haven Spanish Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) at 681 Dixwell Avenue.

The SDA church and Harvin’s home church, the venerable Pitts Chapel around the corner on Brewster Street, had been in negotiations since the pandemic with the Connecticut Food Bank to establish a food pantry.

That had been the dream of Pitts Chapel’s Helen Carr and the SDA Church’s Pastor Valery St. Natus. Those two churches had been providing food and clothing to the neighborhood’s low-income residents since the SDA Church bought the property six years ago.

But the plan for a new full-service food pantry did not advance because of issues pertaining to the facilities, space, and freezers to hold fresh produce; nor were board and other volunteer staff in place.

Then came Harvin, with his leadership and networking skills. Now, the seed having been planted, the harvest — to use the inspiring religious language animating Monday’s meeting — was about to come in.

“It was [Helen Carr’s] dream, and she asked me to fulfill it,” Harvin said.

To explain part of his mission in founding Newhallville Fresh Start Monday night, Harvin reached back to the spring of 2022, when he was finishing up six years in prison and an associate degree through a prison education initiative run by Yale and the University of New Haven.

He stood in UNH Prof. Bradley Woodworth’s global history course and made an eloquent speech that began with Martin Luther and the Reformation, circled back to the other Martin, Harvin’s hero Martin Luther King Jr., and spoke about fresh starts.

Because the speech had elicited a unique spontaneous standing ovation from fellow students, a recommendation from Woodworth followed, namely that Harvin be considered for a presidential fellowship at UNH; he received it and the experience has transformed Marcus Harvin’s life.

After graduation, Harvin worked a job with Neighborhood Housing Services this summer, and now he’s helping to found a food bank and fledgling community self-help center that plans to open its doors in Newhallville, where Harvin grew up, in the early new year.

Through a Neighborhood Housing Services program that Harvin attended, he was able to write a successful grant and soon $4,000 was available to buy two large freezers and the services of an electrician to connect them in the basement of the SDA church.

Now people were needed, on the board level, and as volunteers, and Harvin was up to that task. In part, he was able to bring them in because Harvin has grander ideas – ​“the pantry is the beginning” – and the board members he assembled appeared eager to be part of that vision.

In addition to pastors Darrell McClam and Valery St. Natus, the pastors from Pitts Chapel and the SDA church, respectively, and their program directors, Harvin’s group of more than a dozen board members and volunteers included Prof. Woodworth of UNH; Adam Rawlings, Harvin’s colleague from Neighborhood Housing Services; local real estate businessman Dennis Carr (Helen’s cousin); UNH’s Associate Dean of Students Ric Baker (in absentia, who supervised UNH’s presidential scholars); and Transitions Clinic (out of Yale University School of Medicine) community health worker Monya Saunders, whose mandate is to work with people post-incarceration on stabilizing medicines and related health issues, and counseling.

Also a board member and perhaps Harvin’s closest colleague is his best friend Babatunde Akinjobi, whom he met in prison, and who is on the same path with him as the assistant director of the planned Newhallville Fresh Start.

“It’s a wholistic fresh start,“ said Harvin. ​“A fresh start with food, then financial literacy, help with addiction, peer support, and mentoring.”

Akinjobi works with Emerge, training folks out of prison in construction and other trades, and they too as an organization are being brought in to the developing group in Newhallvile, said Harvin.

While there will be a focus on working with the recently released, Harvin said the concept is to be open to everyone and to address the needs, beyond food, of people who walk in the door.

“Our goal is to give kids a complete fresh start,” he said, ​“different from us and our parents who grew up on these streets. I know what people need for a fresh start because we had to start over.”

“We need to reach a point so that we don’t need food banks any more” in this community, he said. ​“Each of you around the table has different skills – construction, educators, real estate – and we’ve bridged the two churches.”

And it was not surprising, for this reporter to learn, through previous stories on Harvin’s journey, that he has a larger personal goal for himself as well: To continue on to a bachelor’s degree and then to law school to become an attorney.

Newhallville Fresh Start plans to open in January beginning one day a week, likely Thursday, in the afternoon hours, with details to be announced. 

Those with questions or who are interested in volunteering time or helping with other resources can go here, or contact either [email protected]; or (especially for Spanish speakers) The New Haven Spanish SDA Church’s Ada Sanchez at [email protected]. Adam Rawlings will be coordinating volunteers for this project, and can be reached at 203 – 640-2353.