Two Worcester teens are helping end food insecurity for children and families

When the world fell into the utter chaos known as the year 2020, most people hunkered down to do... well, nothing. With all of this extra time, many turned to Netflix shows, sourdough starters and dusting off a book that’s been lying on a shelf for months.

But it wasn't like that for everybody. The pandemic's strain on food-insecure families weighed heavily on the minds of two Worcester teens who decided to use their newfound free time to bring food to those who need it. Camden and Colton Francis were 16 and 12 years old when they founded Beyond the Crisis, a nonprofit that provides food to several Boston and Worcester-area communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Through their tireless work, they've partnered with local food banks, grocery stores and others help get food in the hands of families who need it. Camden Francis, now 18, joined All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss how "Beyond the Crisis" came to be. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Arun Rath: You're here also on behalf of your brother, Colton, who was 12 years old when you founded Beyond the Crisis?

Camden Francis: So he was 12 when we started this organization together. And ever since then, it's been kind of a rollercoaster ride. It's so great to be doing this with my younger brother, and it's really brought us closer together.

Rath: Did you have some impulse for some reason when the pandemic was going on — that this is just so maddening, you wanted to do something to help? How did it come together?

Francis: So we were sitting and watching news reports about what was going on with the pandemic. It was kind of the height of the pandemic — when it was very crazy and disorienting what was going on with the COVID virus. We knew that we weren't going to be the ones to kind of make a cure or to find the vaccine, but we knew that we can do something.

If you take little steps in, little initiatives, to over time really kind of help our community. So this organization, it really was just kind of a light bulb, an idea, but with the right hands involved in getting our community around it in the right way, we were able to kind of shape this and really turn it into a transformative organization that has helped numerous families in our area.

Rath: So tell us about the early days. How did you actually get it up and running — and balancing that with also going to school in a pandemic?

Francis: Yeah, the early days, it was quite a learning experience. It definitely was a grind in the beginning because there was so much going o. Founding a nonprofit, you need a lot of certifications and credentials. So at first, people really didn't take us too seriously. And it was a little bit frustrating because I was sending emails and they were kind of getting bounced back. I sent in the beginning over a thousand emails and it was like, there was only three or four of them that actually kind of worked out favorably for the organization.

But it really taught us how to have perseverance and grit. There isn't a guarantee when you've found anything that is going to work out or be successful, but seeing what this initiative has turned into is very optimistic for my brother and I. And just knowing how we can help, and just having the ability to help individuals has just really been a great experience.

Rath: That's brilliant how you kept at it. Was there a point at which you realized, "We can actually do this, we're going to break through and make a difference?"

Francis: One of the main points was our mentor, Kathleen Walsh, which is the president and CEO of the Metro North YMCA. She helped us and gave us a lot of knowledge and insight and helped us kind of avoid the pitfalls that a lot of smaller organizations do. So starting and not having a lot of finances to kind of get off the ground, it's mandatory that you don't make certain mistakes and find certain pitfalls that can be kind of detrimental.

But with her help and insight and her experience, we definitely expedited our knowledge of nonprofits and charities, and we really grew at a faster rate, and that really was a turning point in our organization. We saw a positive trajectory for this organization, and it turned from an idea and a lot of research to something that was actually coming together. And that's a very exciting point for a lot of founders because, in the beginning days, it's a lot of stress, to put it that way.

Rath: Tell us about some of the other elements that came together to help make this a reality.

Francis: What helped this take off is that we were on “The Drew Barrymore Show.” Drew Barrymore allowed us to have a platform to inspire a lot of teenagers our age. That really helped us get donations and stuff like that.

Another thing we do is we spend a lot of time working with colleges, and that's where we get our large volunteer database and a lot of our interns. And what we want to, we couldn't stress enough is that we couldn't have done it without the help of our community. It's not just Camden and Colton who founded Beyond the Crisis, but there were a lot of people involved and a lot of people who dedicated time and resources to helping others. And that's really why we do it.

But also, we're part of the Unite Massachusetts Network, which is a lot of affiliates, such as organizations and colleges, and even larger organizations, such as United Way. Through them, we kind of pull resources and ideas constantly. We also work and do conferences. We were recently invited to the White House Conference of Hunger, Nutrition and Health, and through them, we work with governors, Congresspeople — such as Jim McGovern, who is our largest donor to date. So there's a lot of people involved in our organization.

We even work with influencers such as Lady Gaga. She has her own organization, which is called the Born This Way Foundation. Through her organization, she's featured us in numerous issues in her Channel of Kindness platform, and she has also allowed us to just inspire a lot of other people.

What kind of made Beyond the Crisis operational is: how can we market it as something that other people can get behind? Because if nobody wants to get involved, it's really hard to start an organization or anything like that.

Rath: Tell us about that growth since you got the foothold, where you are now after the last two and a half years.

Francis: So right now, we're working with the Catholic Charities of Boston and the Beacon Communities of Worcester, and we're expanding in our local community to help more housing communities and homeless shelters in Boston and Worcester. And we're doing a lot of work in different areas, but we're kind of still expanding organically and really making sure that it's manageable, as my brother and I are still — I'm going to college and my brother's in his first year of high school. So we want to kind of establish Beyond the Crisis, and we're really trying to grow at a manageable rate.