Ripples of Kindness
Healing Meals Community Project, The New England Pasta Company and BeanZ & Co. are three organizations building a community of caring people in Connecticut and beyond.
Sarah Leathers, Founder and CEO of Healing Meals Community Project, shares in her own words the genesis of her nonprofit in The New England Pasta Company kitchen—and how along with BeanZ & Co., the three organizations are creating a more compassionate community in Connecticut—and beyond. Bonus content: View Sarah Leather’s HartfordTedX talk, “Fueling our hearts with food” on this page, or on You Tube.
My BeanZ & Co. journey began at The New England Pasta Company in March 2016 when my colleague Ellen Palmer and I spoke with Kim Morrison about starting our nonprofit, Healing Meals Community Project. Our mission is to provide healthy, organic meals to people in a health crisis while fostering compassion and empowering teen and adult volunteers in our community. We were curious if Kim might know of a kitchen with available space. She never hesitated in offering us hers on Saturday evenings and Sundays when she was closed—and without charge.
It was a beautiful outpouring of kindness. Kim believed in what we were doing and trusted in her heart it was the right thing to do. In our first week at Pasta Co., we served 4 families and now after 4 years have served 450 families, and have made 47,000 meals. It was a fantastic first kitchen. We were here for a year but we outgrew the space. We were sad to leave a place that felt like home and the wonderful friendships we made with The Morrisons. We believe there is something more we’re going to do together. What a beautiful circle of love our community is.
Giving back to the community has always been central to me. I learned early on from my parents to think about your neighbor. Founding Healing Meals has filled my heart in ways I never could have imagined. One of our teen volunteers says it best of our Healing Meals kitchen, ‘I love the way my heart feels when I leave here.’ BeanZ & Co. has the same effect on people. There’s pure goodness here. So many of us spend our lives struggling to be someone else. Here, we can all be ourselves. And it feels so good.
At Healing Meals, the positive energy we’ve created in our kitchen goes into our food, nourishes our clients and our volunteers, too. Our clients say they feel the love in every bite. That’s also true of BeanZ & Co. It’s nourishing on so many levels. It’s why people keep coming back. It’s not just the food. It’s not just the mission. It’s something deeper. It’s how BeanZ & Co. makes them feel. That’s the beauty of feeling loved. Healing Meals, BeanZ & Co. and The New England Pasta Company are founded on goodness—that’s how the ripples of kindness grow. We’re each doing great work to build a community of caring people.
Healing Meals Community Project is grateful to be chosen as BeanZ & Co.’s 2020 Q1 Tip Jar recipient. We invite you to donate to our healing work in the Tip Jar at BeanZ & Co., or online at healingmealsproject.org. Thank you for your support.
Sarah Leathers took a vision to heal others using food and made it a reality. She is the Founder and CEO of Healing Meals Community Project and works tirelessly every day to deliver on the organization’s dual mission to provide 100% organic meals for families facing a health crisis while empowering their youth volunteers with leadership skills. Sarah is a graduate of Union College with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and The Institute for Integrative Nutrition as a Certified Health and Wellness Coach. Sarah discovered the healing power of food through her own health crisis and has passionately championed bringing the food is medicine approach to Connecticut by founding Healing Meals in 2015.
BeanZ & Co. is an inclusive coffee café employing people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities and demonstrates the possibilities in all of us. The coffee café serves breakfast, lunch, hot and cold beverages, and bakery items for take-out or to eat in, and also offers catering services. BeanZ & Co. is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. BeanZ & Co. is located at 300 West Main Street, Avon, Conn. For more information visit beanzandco.com and friend them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.