Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.183 | feat. Jack Pflanz from Erin's Angels

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Aaron’s Angels of CNY: Weekend and Summer Meals for Food-Insecure Kids Host Noah Chrysler interviews Jack Pflanz, director of fund development and communications for Aaron’s Angels of CNY, a 501(c)(3) food pantry providing meal bags to children facing food insecurity on weekends, school breaks, and during summer. Jack describes the Phoenix School District program where volunteers pack about 500 meal bags per month and teachers discreetly place them into students’ backpacks to protect anonymity. He cites that one in five kids in Oswego County and Central New York go to bed hungry and shares his own experience of hunger harming learning. Jack explains the nonprofit’s growth from a church basement to expanded outreach, an endowment, and two $1,000 scholarships, and notes it is named in memory of Erin Maxwell. He highlights needs, volunteer opportunities, donations (including an Amazon wish list and $5 feeding a child for a weekend), upcoming events including a June 13 bed build with Sleep in Heavenly Peace, and an NFL Alumni meet-and-greet and charity golf tournament benefiting summer meals. 00:00 Hunger and School 00:31 Meet the Host and Guest 00:49 What Aarons Angels Does 01:08 How the Backpack Program Works 02:17 Local Hunger Stats and Jacks Story 03:49 Origin Story and Growth 06:27 Most Requested Foods and Wish List 07:43 Five Dollars Feeds a Weekend 07:58 Build a Bed Event 11:54 Meet and Greet and Golf Classic 14:41 Summer Meals When School Ends 16:22 How to Volunteer and Donate 17:53 Why Jack Does This Work 19:05 Volunteer Impact and Friendsgiving 20:14 Final Call to Action and Future 23:15 Wrap Up and Studio Promo

I went to bed hungry more nights than I care to remember. And I can remember not only not sleeping well and not having eaten since lunch the day before at school, but also not being able to concentrate, not being able to study, not being able to take in information, not being able to take good notes, always falling behind in the reading. And so hunger has a lot to do with the barrier to education. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler.

Today I am sitting with Jack from Aaron's Angels. Jack, welcome to the show. Thank you, Noah. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself? Sure.

So my name is Jack Flans. I'm the director of fund development and communications for Aaron's Angels of C&Y. Beautiful. Yeah, so tell us what Aaron's Angels is. So Aaron's Angels is a nonprofit 501C3 organization. We're a food pantry that provides meals to children who are facing food insecurity on the weekends during winter breaks, during spring breaks, and throughout the summer.

Cool. So what exactly does that look like? What are you guys actually doing and providing to people in the Central New York area? Sure. So we have a program in the Phoenix New York School District called the Phoenix Program, and what we do is we have volunteers come to the school about every two weeks, and we pack about 500 meal bags a month. Wow.

And these are families who have registered with the school and signed up for this program. And we pack enough food, I mean, throughout the month, for weekends throughout the month. And these food bags find their way to the teachers. Then the teachers put those bags into the backpacks when the kids are not in class, when they're at recess or gym or lunch or what have you. And then the food bags end up going home on Fridays. And we do that so that there's anonymity. and so that there is no bullying and kids aren't being picked on because their family is dealing with food insecurity. Yeah.

No, that's wonderful. Can you tell me about like the need for this, right? I know that there's probably different studies and things about kids when they're hungry, they can't learn and things. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Sure. So in central, well, we'll start with Oswego County, where Phoenix, New York and the program is located. In Oswego County, one in five kids go to bed hungry. any given night. Wow. Now, the Food Bank of Central New York reports that it's one in five

kids in Central New York who also go to bed hungry on any given night. Feeling America cited that the three counties on the top ten list of food insecurity in New York State are Oswego County, Anada County, and Anadaga County. Wow. Now, I was a kid who grew up in poverty. I was a kid who grew up in food insecurity. I went to bed hungry more nights than I care to remember. And I can remember not only not sleeping well and not having eaten since lunch the day before at school, but also not being able to concentrate, not being able to study, not being able to take in information, not being able to take good notes, always falling behind in the reading. And so hunger has a lot to do with the barrier to education.

And the mission of Aaron's Angels is to pull together the people and the resource, so that we can break down the barriers to education and create opportunities for kids to thrive as kids and then thrive as adults. Yeah. I mean, that's incredible. I mean, those numbers are shocking, and I can't believe that those, I mean, three counties right here are the top food insecure counties in the state. That's absolutely terrible. Got it.

Cool. Can you tell me a little bit about the origin story of Aaron's Angels? Sure. So Aaron's Angels began about nine years ago. our founder and executive director, and we call her the chief angel officer, Sheila Dion. She was working as a food service worker in the Phoenix School District,

and long story short, kids were asking for food to bring home on Fridays for the weekend, for their families. And she discovered that Phoenix did not have a school weekend backpack program. So she set out to create one. It started in the basement of a church under the church's nonprofit certification. And over the last nine years,

it has grown to having two offices in Phoenix, New York, an endowment with the Upstate Medical Foundation, a scholarship program where we're providing two $1,000 scholarships to two Oswego County High School seniors, a community outreach program where if we get calls or we see a need from any agency or school in Oswego County or any other community, County, we're going to get with them and figure out what their need is and figure out how to

help them meet that need. And a prime example would be not too long ago Liverpool School District reached out to us and they needed snacks for their kids. We met them at B.J's Warehouse and bought them a bunch of snacks for their kids. The Red House Theater right here in Syracuse needed lunches for some of their kids for their summer program. We helped them get their lunches. Oh, how cool.

You know, they also needed snacks. We helped them get their snacks. a school in Utica needed food for their food pantry. So we loaded up my 2012 Nissan Rogue hatchback and brought them a bunch of food. So between, you know, and I'm just scratching the surface of the different programs that we have that meet food insecurity needs for kids. But it's evolved over the last nine years. Now the program is named after a little girl named named after a little girl named after a little girl named after a little girl named after. Well, many people might remember this case.

Aaron was a little girl who was neglected, abused, starved, and eventually murdered by her stepbrother. And in her memory, we are trying to make sure that no other kid goes hungry. Yeah. I mean, it's incredible that you're doing so many of those different programs. That's awesome. How many kids would you say, do you have numbers about how many kids you're probably feeding? I can tell you we pack 500 meal bags a month. Got it.

That's incredible. And so we're doing about 125 a week. Wow. You know, $250 every two weeks. Wow. This is kind of a fun question to kind of steer a little bit. What do you think? So it's been a little while since I've been in school and trading things and trading lunch items and things.

What is like the most popular, like, food item that you are packing for these kids? Do you hear good things and bad things? Yeah. Yeah. So they love the cereal cups. Okay. Because who doesn't love having a bowl of cereal on Saturday morning, right? Sure, yeah.

So they love the cereal cups. They love the fruit snacks and they love the mac and cheese cups. Cool. And those are the three things we have in biggest demand. Cool. And we have an Amazon.com wish list. So if anybody would like to purchase those items through Amazon and have them shipped right to the school for the meal packing,

they can go on errandsangels.com right on the, the home page, you'll scroll down and see the Amazon link. You can order up anything on the list, and we'll get that directly from Amazon, and that'll go right in the bags. Oh, how great. What is that website exactly? Aaron'sangels.com. So it's E-R-I-N-S-A-A-Gels.com. Beautiful. That's wonderful. I love that you guys are on top of it, and you go straight to the website, get on the wish list, and you can get it straight away. That's incredible. And we also have a partnership with the Food Bank of Central New York. So we purchase food in bulk through them. So $5, just $5 feeds a kid for a weekend. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. Cool. You also mentioned that you have some events coming up. So let's talk about some of those.

We sure do. So on June 13th, we have an incredible event. We're partnering with the Syracuse chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Their mission is to make sure that no kids sleeps on the floor in that town. So we're partnering with them and we've created a bed build on June 13th at Michael A. Maroon Elementary School from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. We have 60 volunteers who have signed up. We have a number of sponsors. We have grow wealth partners who has made a huge contribution to pay for all the materials we need to build 50 bets. Wow. Right. And so then we also have Trask embroidery who is working on. all the t-shirts for the volunteers. And then the Richard S. Shinaman Foundation is providing the funding for those t-shirts.

And then we have an in-kind sponsor. Small Town Girl Marketing has been doing the website and all the graphic illustrations and all the graphics for the social media and a lot of the social media posts since day one. Oh, wonderful. So I often say we can't do what we do. without outside help.

For sure. We cannot operate in a bubble. There is no way for us to feed or provide thousands of meals every year on our own. So we are constantly looking for impact partners. In Oswego County

and Anadena County anywhere we can get them. And then we're also constantly looking for volunteers to help us on our board of directors to steer the ship. So we've been around for nine years and we want to be around for the next 90 years.

Yeah. And we have several committees that we have teams of people working on different things. So we have a fundraising committee that meets once a month, and we organize all the different fundraising activities and events that we have going on. We have an advocacy committee who advocates and fights for stricter laws with regard to child abuse in New York State. We have a finance committee to help us make sure that we're being fiscally responsible. You know, we have a scholarship committee that helps us direct those scholarship funds to kids in Oswego County who are looking to go to trade school or college after high school. And I'll tell you, we have a wonderful example of a young man who was in the food program growing up. And he's been volunteering for us since he was a little guy.

His name was Douglas. And Douglas was a recipient of one of our scholarships. and he's now studying web design. Oh, how wonderful. So we're simply, we're not just trying to provide food. We're trying to break that whole cycle, right? We're trying to give them the resources so they can thrive now and thrive later. Yeah.

So on the 13th, we're going to be building 50 beds at the Michael A. Maroon Elementary School with 60 volunteers. These beds will be stored at the elementary school, or these pieces of the beds, I should say. And we're looking for volunteers to help us manage. that hub in Phoenix so that when families from Yeswego County apply for a bed through sleep and heavenly peace volunteers can simply go to the school in Phoenix grab what they need go to the home build the bed right there in the bedroom and then leave behind all of the bedding all the sheets and all the pillows needed wonderful yeah wonderful and that's happening uh when June 13th june 13th fantastic and where can people find out more information about that so we have some information

on the Aaron's Angeles Facebook page, and you can also find information on the Sleep and Heavenly Peace website. Beautiful. Sounds good. Wonderful. Cool. So that is the Build of Bread program coming up June 13th. And then you also mentioned

that there is a golf event and meet and greet event too. Can you tell me about those? So it's going to be a busy weekend. Okay. So the very next day on Sunday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Collegian Hotel in Syracuse,

we're going to have a meet and greet with former NFL players, current or former SU players and current SU coaches. And folks can, you know, if they enter the golf tournament, they're able to come to the meet and greet and there's going to be hors d'oeuvres. There's going to be silent auction. There's going to be music. It's going to be a good time.

Yeah. And you're going to get to mingle and interact with some of these guys who were on the football field in the big show. Absolutely. That's incredible. Yeah. And so the next day, and this is all through the NFL Alumni Association, Central New York chapter. Cool.

And so the next day, from 830 to 930, there's registration. And then at 10 o'clock, the golf tournament kicks off, the annual charity golf classic. And Aaron's Angels is one of the beneficiaries of that golf tournament. And for folks who would like to play golf with a former NFL player or a former SOU player or a current coach, they can go to the NFL alumni chapter Facebook page. There's a give butter link that they can click on and sign up. It's $400 per person or $1,600 for a foursome. And that includes coming to the meet and greet,

dinner, lunch on the turn, you know, all the different things that golf tournaments do. And it's a captain and crew setup. Cool. And so those funds are going to come back to us to help us with our summer meals. program. Oh, wonderful.

You know, in addition to Aaron's Angels, some of the funds will also benefit a scholarship fund for a young man who was a two-time New York State college wrestling champion, a former NFL player, and a former member of the NFL alumni chapter. Cool. Wonderful. Great. So for $400, you can sign up, you can go to the meet and greet. You get dinner.

You get lunch the next day. You're going to this golf tournament, and you get to meet all these NFL players in current SU coaches and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, and there's prizes to be won. Oh, cool. It's going to be good. If you're into the NFL and if you're in the golf, this is the event for you. I love it. And we can find out more about that by doing what? Yeah, you can either go to the Aaron's Angels Facebook page or you can go to the NFL alumni chapter Central New York Facebook page. Beautiful. Wonderful. You mentioned four events in total. We had the bed event. We had the golf event. We had the meet and greet. There was a fourth thing as well. Yeah. So during the school year,

as I mentioned, we provide, we pack 15, I'm sorry, we pack, you know, about 125 meal bags a week, so 500 meal bags a month, and we do that at the school, and it's all set up through the teachers, and the mealbags go home through the backpacks. Well, what happens when school stops in June? Hunger doesn't go away, right? These kids still need to be fed on the weekends. So we've created a summer meals program where people can donate. They can either donate through the link or they can contribute monetarily. And we provide meal bags throughout the summer. So we have a dozen or so volunteers who are going to come to our office in Phoenix and pack these meal bags on a Thursday. And then on Friday, instead of sending these meal bags home with the backpacks to the teachers, we're going to

personally deliver these meal bags to the homes. Wow. Right. So the month of June, we are doing a fundraising campaign to try to make sure that we have the resources to purchase this food that's needed for these kids so that they can enjoy their summer. What is summer for for kids? Yeah. Right?

It's for fun. Yeah. Right. So how much fun is it to wonder where your next meal is coming from? Right. How much fun is it to go to bed hungry? Mm-hmm. Right?

How much fun is it? to wonder when your next meal is coming. I've been there. I've done that. It's not a lot of fun. Yeah. Awful. Well, that's awesome, though. That, I mean, how wonderful. How many people does it take to deliver all those meals over the summer?

Well, as many as we can get. Yeah. So we're in need of volunteers. If folks want to give a call to the Aaron's Angels office, all the information is on the website, or they can reach out to me via email, Jack at Aaron's Angels, E-R-I-N-S-A-L-S-A-L-R-I-N-S-A-L-O-S-A-L-S-A-N-E-R-N-S-A-N-S-A-R-E-R-I-N-S-A-R-S-E-R-E-R-E-N-E-R-N-E-R-A-L-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-U-N-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-U, we're on Facebook. So, you know, if you need to get a hold of us, we're

there. Yeah. Cool. So basically, if people are interested in helping out with this, like, an incredibly worthy cause, right? They can sign up to deliver food from your location to these kids in need over the summer. Absolutely.

They can sign up to deliver food. They can send up to come into the office and help us pack these meal bags or they can donate to us monetarily. So we have the food that we need to make sure these kids are nourished. And, you know, it's all about, the way we look at it is. it's all about love. It's all about caring. It's all about making a difference.

And kids don't have a voice. The adults do. So it's up to us to make sure these kids have what they need so that they can thrive in life. Absolutely. No, that's incredible. Cool, Jack, from a personal level, why do you do what you do?

Well, I grew up in food insecurity. I grew up not knowing where my next meal was coming from. I grew up in a hostile family environment. So the story of Aaron Maxwell resonates with me. I didn't have it quite as better as Aaron did, but it was a rough childhood. And going to school and being at school hungry made academic achievement very, very difficult. Yeah. And I didn't have anyone to tell me when it was time to go to bed.

I would fall asleep in front of the TV and wake up to Oak Canada on CKWS at one in the morning. and then stumble my way in the bed and half the time get up in time to go to school, get myself dressed, you know, grab a bowl of sugary cereal that wasn't good for me, and stumble my way to school and have an incredibly difficult time learning.

And so I am so fortunate that I get to make a living and spend my days trying to assure that kids don't have to go through what I went through growing up. For sure. When you see volunteers work with you, guys, do you see, what does the impact of this work have on them? Do they regret it? They're like, oh, I wasted my day doing this. Tell me about the. No, we have people who have been with us

since day one, nine years ago. Wow. Yeah, the folks who, like Douglas, Douglas has been volunteering with us since he was a little guy. And he came to an event not too long ago called Friendsgiving, which is something we do at Thanksgiving time. He spent 12 hours. They're helping us log boxes and help us do really heavy work to make this event happen. He also came to our volunteer recognition event and helped us capture a video of our volunteers on video talking about why they support Aaron's Angels. So our volunteers are repeat volunteers. They come back time after time after time.

And a lot of the folks who pack the meal bags every two weeks, they've been doing it for years. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, cool. Jack, thank you so much for everything. Is there anything else that you want to touch on that we didn't get a chance to talk about? Well, I just want to mention that Aaron's Angels exist so that there's no kid hungry. And whether it's volunteering on a committee, volunteering on our board, coming to an event, helping out with the summer meals program, sharing, liking, and commenting on our social media, it all helps. Yeah. Yeah.

Any form of engagement, any form of support, even if it's your time, even it's your money. Like, I mean, that's incredible. Yeah. And whatever's easiest. No. And it's such a worthy cause, too. I mean, like, you know, I feel like people, I feel like the public attention has been off of this idea that like children are the future, right?

And but it's still true, you know, it's like, you know, these future generations, like these are the people that are going to be in control of society at some point, you know? And so making sure that we are doing a good job of like, you know, making sure that they're stewarding good education and good opportunities is really important. Yeah, I have a 24-year-old daughter, soon to be 25. She's graduating a student student of a master's degree to be an art teacher. Wonderful. Because of the way I grew up, because I grew up in hunger, because I grew up in a hostile

environment, my daughter did not grow up that way. No. Food on the table, three, four days, four times a week was never a question. In fact, at one point, we opened up a cooking school to help families learn how to eat healthier, cook meals together, and come to the kitchen table, put the devices away and communicate. And so what we do now is going to impact these kids at a future time. I often say that donating to us today, feeding a kid today,

nourishes and nurtures a kid tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think that that's wonderful too, right? I mean, you know, you went through all of that suffering and that horrible stuff, right? And you've devoted your adult life to, you know, changing the lives of other people so that nobody else has to go through that too. Right. That is incredible.

And I'm not the only one. Like I said, our founder, Sheila Dion, she's been doing this for me. nine years as a volunteer. We have so many volunteers. Our board of directors is all volunteer. We just elected a new vice president of the board and a new vice

president of the board. We've recently tried to make a transition from a volunteer-led organization to more of an employee-led organization. Hence myself, and then we have

one other actually two full-time people. And so we're trying to carry this. We're trying to feed the kids today, but we're trying to carry this as far into the future as we can, which is why we have the endowment of upstate foundation. And the more we can do today, the better things are tomorrow.

For sure. Cool. Well, Jack, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and sharing all the wonderful things that you guys are doing at Aaron's Angels. One more time. Plug the website. Work can people go to find stuff. Sure.

So Aaron's Angels. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram, and folks can also call me 315-374-0-0693 or email me at Jack at aaron's angels.com. Beautiful. Jack, thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. This is a show put on by ClickStream Studios, and we just moved into the new Spaghetti warehouse location here. It is at, it's on North Clinton Street. It's a lot of fun. To celebrate us moving into this new location, we are doing free marketing plans for central New York business owners. If you own a business in central New York, or if you help with a

nonprofit or anything like that, you can reach out to us. If you go to call that clickstreamstitios.com, I will sit with you for about 45 minutes. I will learn everything I can about your business, and I'll put together a free marketing plan for you. We'll give that to you for free. You can either execute that on your own or if you want to, you can execute it with us here in our brand new studio. We've got this brand new studio here in the Spaghetti Warehouse location. We'd love to give you a tour as well if you're interested. Call. Clickstream Studios.com for that free marketing plan. Also, thank you so much to our sponsor, Ads on the Go. Get Ads on the Go.com. Thank you very much for watching. Have a great day, guys. See you next time.