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Sarai Exil
By Henry Palattella The columbus dispatch
When Sarai Exil signed up for AmeriCorps, which connects young adults with communities in need, she said she wanted to go wherever she was most needed.
She ended up at Columbus City Schools’ LindenMcKinley STEM Academy in the fall of 2011, five hours from her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Exil committed to doing her best, but she worried she wouldn’t be able to help students during the year and a half she was there.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t have enough energy or enthusiasm,” said Exil, 29. “It wasn’t because I didn’t have enough going on in my head or my heart or my soul. It was just because there are so many non-academic barriers that our students are facing in our school system.”
Those barriers came up again in the summer of 2016, as Exil, who graduated from Ohio State University a year earlier with a communications degree, listened to Columbus City Schools teacher Nicole Hebert-Ford talk about how she wanted to create stores in schools where kids could get basic needs. Exil thought back to her two years at Linden-McKinley, where she routinely found herself buying basic supplies for students. She introduced herself to Hebert-Ford, and Student Success Stores were born.
The stores are set up in schools and stock items such as food, clothes, shoes, body wash, bras and underwear, tampons and toiletries. Even though they’re called stores, all the items are free; all students need to do is set up an appointment or visit the stores during open periods.
Photo by Fred Squillante The columbus dispatch
In July, the stores celebrated their third anniversary. Four more schools added the stores this summer, bringing the total to nine. The schools were first placed in middle schools due to the changes facing students at that age.
“Middle school is such an awkward time, and sometimes these kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” Exil said. “We’re expecting our students to come in ready to learn, and we’re expecting so much of our teachers that somehow they’re just going to miraculously take away all these nonacademic barriers.”
The Student Success Stores and the storage center on Morse Road are staffed by volunteers. Students can visit the stores every school day.
For those around Exil, the stores and what they do continue to amaze. “The fact that Sarai identified that need in some of our most impoverished schools and helps provide those students with support is incredible,” said Matthew Goldstein, CEO of Besa, a nonprofit that has helped supply the Success Stores with volunteers to work in the stores and warehouses. “It feels wonderful to be a part of her vision.”
About 67 percent of the students at Wedgewood Middle School live below the federal poverty level, so as soon as principal Diane Campbell found out about the Student Success Stores, she pushed to have one added to Wedgewood last school year.
“The store is near and dear to my heart, because it’s something I would have needed as a kid,” Campbell said. “To be able to provide something that is a necessity means a lot.”
In addition to serving as the president of the Student Success Stores board, Exil also works at Big Lots as its philanthropy and events specialist. While it can be tough for her to balance the Student Success Stores on top of her full-time job, the impact it has on the community is something that makes it all worth it.
“The most beautiful thing about the stores is that I can sit down with someone and talk about it with them and they immediately get it,” Exil said. “They understand the importance and want to try to help. That’s the Columbus way.” H
Tracy Kronk
A volunt eer’s nonprofit serves hundreds of k ids in rura l Ohio.
By Erica Thompson The columbus dispatch
Photos by Rob Hardin DI spatch MA gazines
For many kids, an extra day off school is like hitting the jackpot. Holidays, snow days or teachers’ workdays can bring treasures like more TV time, more internet hours and more sleep in the morning.
But some kids would rather be in school.
A mom of four, Tracy Kronk glimpsed that reality when she was volunteering in her child’s classroom at Norwood Elementary. She made a comment to a young boy about how hard it must be to come back following a three-day weekend.
“He just looked at me from his paper, and he says, ‘Mrs. Kronk, when I’m at home I don’t get to eat. I only eat when I get breakfast and lunch at school,’ ” Kronk recalled. “And I still, to this day, don’t have a response that would have been appropriate to give him at that time.”
Instead, Kronk took action, slipping extra food in his backpack and, unbeknownst to her, setting off a chain reaction. “By the end of the week, it was two [kids],” she said. “In two weeks, it was 17. Now you flash forward, seven and a half years later, and I’m at 600.”
Operating the nonprofit Sufficient Grace, Kronk, 43, and her team of volunteers serve students in grades pre-K through 12 in school districts in Madison, Union and Clark counties. Each week, they meet at West Jefferson United Methodist Church to assemble boxes of evening and weekend meals. Contents include nonperishable, easy-to-prepare items like ramen noodles, pudding and granola bars.
With hopes to add all schools in the Northeastern Local School District in the near future, Kronk anticipates that she soon could be helping between 800 and 900 students.
But it all started in West Jefferson, about 20 miles west of Columbus, where Kronk lives with her husband and kids. Appearances would not immediately suggest a hunger problem in the community.
“It’s a cute little country town,” said volunteer Michaele Budd. “There’s the antique shops, the pizza places, the little doctor’s offices. And you just don’t think that you’re going to find hungry people here, hungry children here. And yet there’s a need.”
Kronk was similarly surprised. “Hard times are kind of secret, and they fall on everybody, no matter what their house or their car look like,” she said. “So that was probably a real eye-opener for me.”
Drug abuse in Ohio, which has one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the country, also is a contributing factor. “What we see is, there are so many parents who are, unfortunately, caught up in the drug community,” said Barbara Rife, president of the London Lions Club, which helps raise money for Sufficient Grace. “And it’s the children that suffer. It’s the money that should be spent to feed and clothe the children that just isn’t used that way.”
“I have a heart for the rural area because I know that it’s hard for those kids to get access,” Kronk said. “They can’t walk to a program after school. Once you’re bused home, you’re home. So being that we’re allowed in the school system is a really magic thing for us.”
Tracy Kronk and Sufficient Grace volunteers pack food boxes for students at the West Jefferson United Methodist Church pantry.
Kronk said it takes about $15,000 per month to feed all the children in the Sufficient Grace program. Receiving donations helps, but in the early years, especially before she had 501(c)(3) status, she didn’t know how she’d manage at times.
“The money ends up showing up,” Kronk said. “You pray on it, and you tell your volunteers. They’re really great about spreading the word, and it gets supported.”
Seeing that continuous provision over the years has had a significant impact on Kronk’s oldest daughter, Mary, a 19-year-old college student. “It actually helped my faith grow,” Mary said. “There’s been some months when we were days before the deadline, and we didn’t have enough money. You can’t just tell the kids, ‘Hey, sorry, we don’t have food this week.’ … But it would come down to like the night before and somehow something would come together.”
Kronk’s own spiritual beliefs have informed the entire nonprofit, which she describes as a calling. Its name comes from a Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” And she waits for schools to come to her, believing their requests are in line with God’s will.
“I don’t want to overstep what the Lord can supply me with and where he wants me to be,” she said.
Sufficient Grace does more than provide nourishment to the students; it allows them to form meaningful relationships outside of their homes.
“You can just tell how important it is to them, knowing that somebody cares about them,” said Melissa Ferguson, the nurse for West Jefferson Local Schools. “The ladies from the church that come and pass the food out—those kids learn their names, and they hug them. They just feel loved.”
Additionally, seeing the same school staff each week has other positive effects. “There were a couple of students who were dealing with a domestic violence issue in their home,” said Melissa Canney, a student support specialist in London City Schools. “And when the teacher contacted me about this and the students saw me, they instantly knew me from getting Sufficient Grace. They already had trust with me. It made it easier for them to be able to talk to me.”
Because the process is discreet and open to anyone, parents can receive assistance without feeling ashamed. “Parents are more likely to accept the help because they don’t have to
come in and fill out paperwork or come stand in line to pick up the food,” Ferguson said. “It’s sent home with their child.”
Sufficient Grace also has transformed the lives of its volunteers, opening their eyes to the extent of the hunger issue, allowing them to form new friendships and inspiring them. “It’s a nice fellowship,” Budd said of her time preparing the boxes with the other volunteers. “We talk about our lives, our families, what’s going on in our community. … I do some things outside of here with some of these people.”
“She just keeps going,” said Kronk’s neighbor, Nena J. Dillon, who nominated her for the Everyday Heroes recognition. “I keep thinking, ‘OK, she’s going to tell these next people no, but she never tells them no.’ ”
Kronk doesn’t plan to slow down anytime soon. In fact, she’s hoping Sufficient Grace will get its own facility as it is outgrowing the church pantry.
“I think she’s a savior,” said volunteer Donna Johnson. “She’s saving some of these kids.”
Kronk may be too humble to agree, but she has accepted another title given to her by a kindergartener in the early days of Sufficient Grace.
“It’s you,” he said after finally meeting Kronk face-to-face. “What do you mean?” she said.
“I thought I had a food fairy that left food ‘cause they knew I was hungry.”
Kronk eventually learned he was the little brother of the very first boy she helped.
“It was really a surreal thing,” she said. “If food fairies exist, I’m happy to be that.” H
tracy kronk
Neighborhood: West Jefferson
W ho inspires you? “As cliché as it may sound, my answer would have to be Jesus,” she said. “I was given a great gift when I was redeemed. How better to appreciate His love for me than by spreading love and kindness to precious children?”
What keeps you engaged? Hearing stories of positive impact simply from the receipt of a box of food and a kind person handing it to them. One example: There was a first-grade boy who previously lived in a severely food-insecure environment and was now living with stepgrandparents. Upon coming to live with them, he was anxious and couldn’t sleep. Once he started receiving his SG box, he placed it on his dresser at night and said he could sleep better knowing he wasn’t going to be hungry anymore. “Sometimes peace for a child is simply not being hungry,” Kronk said. “I am blessed to have a small part in that.
Food items waiting to be packed into Sufficient Grace food boxes; below, filled boxes ready for distribution
