About Us

The First Summer
Lunch Program

On March 3, 2007, our Founder and Executive Director, Kim Emch, prayed to ask the Holy Spirit to “light [her] heart on fire in a whole new way.” On March 11, 2007, she learned there were 2,158 children in the Hilliard City School District – a suburban town where she lived, worked and her children went to school – who were living in poverty. She was shocked and immediately felt God calling her to love, feed and serve them body, mind and spirit, and to bring the body of Christ alongside her. She recruited eleven volunteers who also felt God calling them to feed His sheep, and together they started a free summer lunch program in their city. They asked everyone they knew to help, and 175 volunteers from the community showed up to serve 2,376 lunches to 246 children facing poverty that summer. It was an overwhelming success, and the Serving Our Neighbors Summer Lunch Camp was born!

No one had ever seen a free summer lunch camp in a suburban town – representatives from the Ohio Department of Education and the USDA even came to see it! That summer was the first hint to the team that poverty was migrating to the first-ring suburbs across the US as urban cities were being gentrified and revitalized.

Our Mission

Ending poverty through life-changing relationships with neighbors and God.

OUR FIVE PILLARS

While Festa isn’t an acronym, it helps us tell our story. We Feed, Educate, Serve, Train and Advocate through multi-generational English education.

S

Serve

We rally over 1,000 community members every year and equip them to serve our neighbors.

E

Educate

We provide multi-generational educational support to help entire families escape the poverty cycle.

F

Feed

We strive to serve healthy meals to children all year round.

T

Train

We document and teach other communities what we do and how we do it to expand and serve more people.

A

Advocate

We help those in our community by giving them a hand up and not a hand out.

Our Values

PEOPLE are our priority – RELATIONSHIPS are our goal.

We see each person CREATED in GOD’s own image; each has a purpose and a voice.

We build up COMMUNITY one respectful, empowering relationship at a time.

We bring HOPE to children and families in need of support by connecting them to people, resources and a hand up.

We nurture DREAMS to alleviate poverty.

Through PARTNERSHIPS, we strive together for the BEST for our community.

We are INSPIRED by the unexpected.

Our Vision

Festa is the catalyst bringing the community together to be a place where:

No child experiences the hopelessness of hunger.

Families working their way out of poverty are connected to resources that will meet their basic needs, so hope is restored, families are stabilized and community is built.

Local neighbors and churches partner to demonstrate the gospel through their service and by building relationships with people in need.

The First Summer
Lunch Program

On March 3, 2007, our Founder and Executive Director, Kim Emch, prayed to ask the Holy Spirit to “light [her] heart on fire in a whole new way.” On March 11, 2007, she learned there were 2,158 children in the Hilliard City School District – a suburban town where she lived, worked and her children went to school – who were living in poverty. She was shocked and immediately felt God calling her to love, feed and serve them body, mind and spirit, and to bring the body of Christ alongside her. She recruited eleven volunteers who also felt God calling them to feed His sheep, and together they started a free summer lunch program in their city. They asked everyone they knew to help, and 175 volunteers from the community showed up to serve 2,376 lunches to 246 children facing poverty that summer. It was an overwhelming success, and the Serving Our Neighbors Summer Lunch Camp was born!

No one had ever seen a free summer lunch camp in a suburban town – representatives from the Ohio Department of Education and the USDA even came to see it! That summer was the first hint to the team that poverty was migrating to the first-ring suburbs across the US as urban cities were being gentrified and revitalized.

The Launch of the 3-Generation Family ESL Program

Kim learned of an existing partnership between Hilliard United Methodist Church and a local technical school who had been working together to teach English to adults for the past ten years, with 55 adult students participating in 2008. Kim headed a children’s program, serving infants up through children in eighth grade, to the adult English program to create the very first 3-Generation Family ESL program. The student population quickly expanded and more than doubled – 121 adults were attending regularly by January 2010.

Festa (formerly Serving Our Neighbors Ministries) began running the programming for the entire family – infants through grandparent age. We believe in providing the education each family member needs to taking steps OUT of poverty and go from surviving to thriving. Adults study the English language while children participate in early literacy lessons, reading, math and homework support along with recreational programming.