Photography by Shelby Tauber.
Every Wednesday, tens of families and individuals line up in a worn-down strip mall near Skillman Road and LBJ. Beneath an unassuming green sign reading “The New Room,” the men, women and children wait their turn.
They’re waiting to be fed.
The doors open, they walk in and register with volunteers. They’re given a number signifying their place in line — standard procedure for soup kitchens and food pantries. What isn’t quite standard procedure, however, is that the number goes on a nametag, placed on their chest, with their name written proudly in marker.
“We try to treat people with dignity. Dignity and integrity is the most important thing,” says current Feed Lake Highlands Executive Director Cynthia Hernandez. “We don’t treat people like numbers. We actually put a name tag on you because we won’t call you by a number, we will call you by your name. You have a name. And to us that’s super important.”
Names are important. So are choices.
Frosted flakes or Cheerios. Taco meat or chili. Elbow noodles or shells. Three tables with multiple food categories and at least two options for each category lay in the middle of the moderately-sized room.
Each individual, pushing along a shopping cart, is escorted by a volunteer who assists them with their bags as they browse. After they’re done, the volunteer helps them to their car or the sidewalk — better service than you would get at most grocery stores these days.
Feed Lake Highlands Inc., founded in 2012 as a nonprofit organization, has pursued a model of dignity and compassion since its inception. The organization evolved from the outreach arm of Lake Highlands United Methodist Church, which had established congregations in the apartment complexes on Whitehurst Drive.
After LHUMC leased The New Room space in 2006 for its outreach in the area, the church decided to begin an after-school program, drawing children from Skyview Elementary. Jill Goad, who worked for the outreach program at the time, realized that practicing long division may not have been the biggest draw.
“We got up to about 30 kids,” Goad says. “And we started realizing, you know what, these kids are more interested in the snack than they are in some of the programs, and they keep coming back going ‘Is there more snacks? Is there more snacks?’ So we started thinking.”
LHUMC initially collaborated with First United Methodist on a food program to supply groceries to low-income Dallas Housing Authority complexes in the area, namely Audelia Manor.
Goad and others from the church eventually decided to strike out on their own as Feed Lake Highlands, registering 14 families, or 51 individuals, initially. Distribution took place just once a month out of The New Room, but the community in need was growing.
“We said, ‘if we get to 50 families, we need to open up another day and find more volunteers.’ I think it was within two years, we had those 50 families, and we had opened up another day,” says Goad, who became executive director.
FLH wasn’t just looking to feed, they were looking to nourish the whole person, mind, body and soul.
“You might be hungry for food, hungry for material resources, you might be hungry for educational resources,” she says. “You might be hungry for relationships. You might be hungry to get to know Jesus Christ. So we say that we feed all parts of the body.”
Goad and the others incorporated bible study, reading programs, worship, ESL classes and youth outreach to Feed Lake Highlands’ portfolio of service.
“The thing that I love the most is thatwe are multifaceted — spiritual feeding, educational feeding and physical feeding,” she says.
Goad served as executive director for over 10 years, growing its food distribution to service over 400 families a month and increasing distribution to four times a month. But in 2023, she decided to retire, leaving the organization to Hernandez, who had spent more than 15 years running nonprofits in New York.
“It has been to the point where I have brought my children to come and volunteer and they love it,” Hernandez says. “I brought my father to come and I’m not from Lake Highlands. I don’t live in Lake Highlands. But since the moment I got here, I am Lake Highlands.”
One of Hernandez’s biggest responsibilities is managing food sourcing. Fifty percent of it comes from the North Texas Food Bank, around 30% is donated by area markets like Sprouts, Tom Thumb, Kroger and Target. FLH directly buys the remainder. Hernandez estimates that they distribute around 10 to 11,000 pounds of food on a weekly basis, providing around 60 meals a week for each family, or roughly three meals a day for five days per person.
While the NTFB and corporate contributions leave FLH in a comfortable position most days, there have been times where the shelves have been near-empty. That’s when Hernandez says they’re lucky it’s Lake Highlands they’re feeding.
“God has been so gracious and abundant that we haven’t had a week where we haven’t been without,” she says. “In a week that if we say we need food we put out the call and the churches come in, LHUMC, the GMC, Lake Highlands Church, you name it, because we have people that go to all the different churches in the community. They all come together.”
“Lake Highlands is definitely a tightknit community within a big big city. You know, everybody knows everybody and everybody is willing to help everybody.”
Hernandez says volunteers and community partners like the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands, Women’s Service League and 100 Women of Lake Highlands have been crucial to FLH’s success.
Her biggest hope going forward?
Unemployment.
“This is gonna sound sarcastic and it really is not,” she says. “If they can put me out of a job, it means our job is done. We have fought hunger.”
