about us
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.
S
Serve
Serve
We rally over 1,000 community members every year and equip them to serve our neighbors.
E
Educate
Educate
We provide multi-generational educational support to help entire families escape the poverty cycle.
F
Feed
Feed
We strive to serve healthy meals to children all year round.
T
Train
Train
We document and teach other communities what we do and how we do it to expand and serve more people.
A
Advocate
Advocate
We help those in our community by giving them a hand up and not a hand out.
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.
Our Values
Staff and Board Members
Central Staff
Kim Emch
Founder and Executive Director
Jean Griffith
Director of Programs
Susan Drake
Director of Operations
Erin Arnett
Donor Relations Coordinator
Lydia Emch
Marketing Communications Manager
Emily Pierce
Senior Programs Manager
Karen Rogers
Program Manager
Tallia Booker
Executive Assistant
Tracy McManamon
Office Manager / Administrative Assistant to Programs
Carolyn Dubois
Programs Associate
Governance Board
Guru Vasudeva
Board Chairman
Senior Vice President and CIO, Program & Application Services, Nationwide Insurance
Neil Lynch
Board Member, Treasurer
JPMorgan Chase (Retired)
Michael Stauffer
Board Member
Director, Valuation and Analytics, American Electric Power
Dr. Hanadi Altawil
Board Member
Grand Canyon University, PhD
Faculty, Columbus State Community College
Faculty, Ohio Dominican University
Kim Emch
Board Member
Founder and Executive Director, Festa
Dr. Kevin Dixon
Board Member
Vice President, Community and Cultural Engagement, Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Board of Franklin County (Retired)
Melissa Johnson
Board Member
Vice President & Operating Partner, Cameron Mitchell Premier Events
Community Relations, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants
Nina Spadafore
Board Member
Financial Director, Crane Group
Strategic Advisors
Cameron and Molly Mitchell
President and Founder of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants
Tom Lennox
President and Founder of DIB Brands
Former Chief Executive and Founder of Pelotonia
Larry and Linda Abbott
Advisory Team
Anne Remias
Human Resources Director
Copper Run Capital
Jim Swearingen
Founder City Vision
Christian Community Development
Association Advisory Board
Chris Nemeth LISW-S
Nemeth Counseling and Consultation
Jeff Marian
Senior Pastor
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Tim Harman
Senior Consultant
Workforce Innovation Center
Glennon Sweeney
Senior Research Associate, Food Justice and Community Assessment and Metropolitan Change
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Wally Martinson
Area Director
Mission Increase Central Ohio
Kitty Allen
President, Primemovers
Owner, Built to Lead-The Allen Group
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.
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.