When Superstorm Sandy roared ashore on October 29, 2012, our community was decimated, and our residents were in absolute shock. While everyone was trying to grasp the reality of what had happened, our community leaders were already putting supports in place. One of the first things Inspire-NJ was faced with was to open the first M>A>R>C> (multi agency resource center).

This needed to be done as soon as possible to assist the residents in stabilizing. The first person who answered the call was Joel Perlmutter. When our first location was found, Joel sent his employees to set up all the shelving, unpack, sort, and organize all the donations and to help with our first distributions. It did not end there! Through the years there has been tremendous support from the Perlmutter Family Shoprite’s.

The Joel E. Perlmutter Memorial Food Pantry will be bringing a reliable, free food source to the area and offering a full delivery service. Our program includes a supermarket style client choice food pantry. We will be offering fresh produce, meats, cheeses, healthy canned choices and dry goods, bakery products and much more. We will be offering and delivering hot, nutritious, supplemental meals to those in need daily. We will also be delivering full pantry orders to the clients who are unable to get to the facility and we will be running mobile pantries on a weekly basis, to the Manchester township and Whiting area. In addition, we will be providing a shopping service that will be funded by the consumer. By doing the deliveries we are able to ensure well checks are performed on these individuals. We can immediately connect them to other social or emergency services or contact loved ones, when needed.