Meals Matter
Middleton has a reputation as a place of plenty, where food insecurity would presumably be low. Growing up here, Noah Duckett had no reason to think otherwise until high school, when he learned about the instability spread across his town. "Middleton is a good school district,” says Noah, “so hearing how many families in that same area were struggling didn't match what I'd assumed."
Instead of filing the information away under the presumption that he, a kid, couldn’t make a difference, Noah took action. He started by calling Way Forward Resources, a local food pantry, to learn what it needed most. Those conversations led Noah and fellow student Wyatt Ehrhardt to run their first food drive in 2024.
Their initial goal was set on paper: collect 100 pounds of food and $100. The result? 1,700 pounds and $600. "We had no read on what a high school community would give," Noah explains. "The size of that gap is what convinced me we weren't done."
Other schools started asking how they'd done it. "It wasn’t something I planned for. I had to decide whether to help them or keep Meals Matter contained to Middleton, and helping them was the obvious answer."
Two years later, Meals Matter has chapters in more than 25 communities.
The growth came without a playbook. In the early months, Noah and his classmates worked out the parts of the job they never even knew to think through, such as where to store 1,700 pounds of canned food overnight, and how a group of teenagers with no organizational experience registers as a 501(c)(3).
"None of that shows up in a good headline, but it's most of what the first year actually was."
That turned out to be the point. Meals Matter never assumed young people had to wait until they were older or more credentialed to take on leadership. Instead, every chapter leader is a teenager running a real budget and answering to a real community.
Now a Harvard student studying economics, Noah sees the idea reaching beyond food drives.
"What keeps pulling me is the same question that started Meals Matter," Noah explains. "How do you build something that gives people more control over solving problems in their own community instead of importing a solution from outside it?"
The chapter Noah started still runs out of Middleton, now under Brooke Lister, a founding member and its current president. This July marked year two, celebrated at one of the monthly food drives the group has held since the start.
The fall calendar is already filling in around the drives: presentations to elementary and middle school classes, community outreach events, and collaborations with other organizations.
The widening is deliberate. What began as a push to raise as much food and money as possible has turned into something Brooke describes as complex.
"An issue as large as food insecurity requires a multifaceted approach, beyond simply collecting cans at drives," she says. The drives still anchor the work, but the group now also tries to build a habit of volunteering in younger students and to advocate for food security more broadly.
The misconception she runs into most is about scale. Because so many families in the area are comfortable, people assume the need is small or that it's at least holding steady. The pantry's own records say otherwise. Between 2022 and 2026, annual visits to WayForward went from 31,522 to 123,289.
"While the reality can be disheartening, it is imperative for people to recognize that it exists," she says.
For readers who want to help, the most direct path is a donation, either to a local pantry or to Meals Matter itself. Beyond donations, Brooke points to volunteering at an event, partnering on a project, or connecting the group with someone who might want to start a chapter of their own.
Meals Matter has worked with a range of community organizations. "No organization is too 'different' from ours to get involved," she says. "We would love anyone interested to reach out about collaborating."
"It can be so easy to sit back and simply do what has always been done," Brooke states. "To achieve widespread change, you must constantly push yourself and your peers to aspire for more."