Candy and other leaders from Bethlehem Church decided to do something about this issue.
Bethlehem Church launched New Path 1010, and Candy Greene was, in her own words “blessed to be the lead person to start it”.
Since it began its weekend food bag distribution in 2018, Candy has always been involved with New Path 1010. And though her role has shifted over time, she’s still as passionate as ever about the cause.
“We found out that there were kids on a waiting list to get weekend food,” she said. “And the big deal was that a lot of times these kids – after their lunch before leaving school on Friday – would not eat again until they came back to school Monday morning. They would not eat over the weekend.
“In this day and age in the United States, most of us can’t even fathom that, because we open the pantry door and have a selection of food to choose from.”
Candy and other leaders from Bethlehem Church decided to do something about this issue.
“It just broke our hearts, especially knowing how important food is for growth and development, focus at school, behavioral issues, etc. I know how I act sometimes when I'm hungry! Knowing how that crosses over and affects so many areas of their life really pushed us to get involved.”
Candy Greene
Since it started its weekend food bag program in 2018, New Path 1010’s reach and influence has grown tremendously, serving almost every school in Barrow County.
Prior to last year, Candy served as community director at Bethlehem Church, helping facilitate connections between the church and local nonprofits – knowing who they are, what they do and helping decide the financial contributions, volunteer support and other involvement.
“Last year, I transitioned to the role of communications director, but what’s super cool is the community team that worked with me have continued forward. We actually have some of our staff regularly serving at New Path, too,” she said.
But the partnership doesn’t stop there. The building New Path occupies to house its food and pack bags is donated by Bethlehem Church, sitting on its 211 campus.
To Candy, something special about New Path isn’t just what they’re doing but how they’re doing it. The food donated and given to kids in need isn’t just sustenance, it’s also dignity and a little piece of joy.
“The quality of the food that’s in New Path’s food bags are things that my kids would eat,” she said. “When I’m personally generous with organizations and food drives, I typically do what I would do for my family. I don’t just cut corners and get whatever’s cheapest. It’s not leftovers; it’s not secondhand. These are high-quality products that kids love.
“One of the leaders who facilitated the food bags when we first started, said the kids, when they opened the bag, were just in awe of what was in there. They had such a great anticipation every week of what they were taking home. That’s something I’ve never forgotten.”
Outside of providing food, New Path 1010 also aims to encourage kids with uplifting messages. And while confidentiality restrictions made that difficult at first, building trust has allowed New Path to make a deeper impact on the kids they serve.
“A big thing is the encouraging messages they put in the bags, because I don’t know of another program that does that,” Candy said. “A lot of these kids who are underprivileged and food insecure, their family unit is not always stable. It’s often safe to assume that there’s not a lot of positive voices speaking into the life of that child.
“We meet the physical needs with food, but then the messages kind of help fill the gap and hopefully show the students a new path, a new way of life from those generational cycles.”
It’s the little things like this that can show a child they’re cared for, even if their home life is a struggle. And it’s the heart behind these little things that led New Path to step in for the community at large in a major time of need.
“In 2020, we connected with Barrow County schools. Since schools were shut down, we couldn’t do our regular food bags, so we just asked: ‘How can we still serve families. What can we do?’,” Candy said.
The answer was something really big.
“They asked us if we could do a community-wide food distribution,” she said. “Partnering with the YMCA, we were able to get about 20,000 pounds of food out in about seven weeks.
“To me, this is just an advantage of New Path being locally run and in tune to the needs of the community – being able to make decisions locally and quickly. We were able to switch gears that fast from a weekend food distribution to getting a truck from the Northeast Georgia Food Bank and giving away food to the community at large, because that was the need in the moment.”
“New Path has never turned someone down for food,” she said. “They’ve served every need that’s come up in the Barrow County School system, and every single year since the program launched, it’s grown and expanded.
“Tifanie [New Path’s current executive director] is amazing and so excited. They’ve also got some awesome board members and some really dedicated volunteers. Some of them have been involved since day one and are still plugged in. People are passionate about what New Path does!
“One of the goals when New Path launched was to not have a single child in our county remain food insecure. It’s really cool to see how that’s unfolding and how people have come around to support it.”
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