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(upbeat music) - Hello and thanks for joining us.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Tonight we're bringing you a special edition of NJ Spotlight News showcasing our digital documentary series, 21, bringing you individuals from all over New Jersey who are changing the state for the better.

The series examines the simple question, does where you live in the state affect how you live?

21 profiled one person in each of our 21 counties and looked at the social determinants affecting that person's life.

In this Encore episode, we'll introduce you to several New Jerseyans who are going above and beyond in their communities.

First, meet Cookie Till.

For Cookie, all things revolve around food, and her team empowers underserved populations in Atlantic County food deserts with opportunities to work, learn, and truly appreciate the gifts of the Garden State.

I love this area.

I love living on the island.

Even after Sandy and my house got destroyed and my restaurant got flooded, I wasn't leaving.

So we've got peach, blueberry, egg pie.

That's what we should call it.

So many things you can do around food that really can make people's lives so much better.

I own Stephen Cookies Restaurant in Margate, New Jersey.

We're going into our 25th year.

I love to feed people and I love to see people happy.

This isn't just about feeding people that want organic and want to eat better, that have the means to do it.

We really need to, as a community, as a society, work to educate people that just have no access to the food or any idea that what they're eating could be hurting their health.

This farm started as a dream about five years ago.

I used to come out to the farm when it was Reed's Farm.

It was a family-owned farm for 75 years.

And every time I drive up here, I was just so blown away by the beauty of the place and just how close it was to the island.

March of 2020, that dream started to take form.

We were able to take this land over, 78 acres, and start building from there.

Just when things were starting to, you know, getting scary, three weeks later my restaurants closed, the whole world shut down.

And it was so therapeutic because I didn't know what to do with myself, but I could be out here.

And then, you know, it just became like, wow, this is what we need.

Like, we all need to know where our food comes from.

We need to know how to grow food.

(gentle music) And that's what people started to embrace during COVID.

The land is not easy.

We're finding out just how hard it is.

You can't just say you're gonna farm organically after a land's been farmed conventionally for 75 plus years.

Some of our crops failed this summer.

I mean, it's just really our second year.

We're really trying to regenerate this land.

This isn't soil.

It's dirt.

But it will be soil.

This is our chicken bus.

The pecking and eating and pooping is magic for the land.

They're like one of our biggest helpers.

We need biomass on the land to start getting life back into the soil.

They're part of this whole regenerative process.

Now that we have a plan, it's exciting.

We could be an outreach to so many different underserved populations.

Food deserts aren't just about putting a supermarket down in the middle of a city and going, "Okay, everybody's good now, we can leave."

It's not like that.

People are still gonna eat the wrong things because there's so much advertising around sugar and carbs and dead food.

You have to start thinking about things different.

Food is a vehicle to help kids just kind of realize their potential.

We started a program in the schools called Harvest of the Month.

Every month we highlight a farm and talk about the vegetable and then we make something together and everybody tastes it.

A lot of these kids have never been off the island, let alone seen these animals, get their hands in the dirt, see where things grow.

Everything revolves around food.

For me, it means a lot to me to be able to acquire this farm and have this be a resource.

People that walk on the farm, you can see what the potential is when you look-- when I look in their eyes and what it does for people already, and seeing the beauty of our area through the agriculture.

We have programming with special needs.

Autistic community has been very supportive.

Workforce development going on, people in recovery coming, people that need to do community service coming out.

They're finding something that speaks to them here.

That's what the dream has been for this place.

I feel that the farm is about empowering people, opening their eyes to just how cool it is to watch things grow.

How is that?

It's like magic.

You know, New Jersey, we are the garden state.

We should elevate that.

That is what I would love to see in my small world of Atlantic County, us getting together and just figuring out how we can just raise everybody up.

Next, we take you to Passaic County, where Rashajon Johnson first took the opportunity to step up for his community during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything else came to a halt.

Johnson's non-profit, Hope With N, continues to bring hope to Passaic residents in their time of need, and has become a pillar of the community, working to fight homelessness and addiction and help anyone who feels left behind.

Take a look.

- Passaic is really special to me.

It's such a small city, but has so many big problems.

And I want to level it out.

Sometimes it takes one person to stand up, to make other people feel confident.

When I first got here, it was open arms.

It was, hey, how you doing?

The acceptance, the grace.

I felt like I grew up here.

It was a strong need for assistance with the homelessness and the drug addictions going on in this city.

There's a saying that go, it takes a community to raise a child.

And that was my saying growing up in my era.

Community is everything.

It's not how you start, it's how you finish.

There's something I had to do.

I couldn't just sit on my hands and just say it is what it is.

I was placed in the Division of Youth Family Services at the age of two weeks.

Being in about six foster homes and seven different orphanages over the course of those 19 years.

It opened up a lot of things that an average child turning into a young man shouldn't have seen.

Things that were missing in a lot of my journey through the foster care system, especially dealing with families, even dealing with a lot of the group homes, it was value.

I will take my journey, take my struggles and be able to identify better with people and be able to give them the love and support that I've lacked in my childhood.

And hopefully I'll be able to reciprocate it in the way of giving it back to others who deserve it and desire it.

It was a lot of hoping, hence Hope Within.

Right at the height of the COVID outbreak, early 2020, being laid off from my job, I was granted unemployment.

But in Passaic, New Jersey, lots of my neighbors, people I call family, they weren't given access to unemployment, or maybe they got lost in the system.

Hearing their stories, their frustration, how am I gonna get food, how am I gonna pay for this?

And it broke my heart to watch them, who have children, not be able to provide.

And I know that hurts as a parent.

I just kept feeling this voice say, "Start it now."

And I was talking against that voice.

I said, "Start what?

"The world is stopped.

"What am I starting?"

And it was just like, "Just do it.

"Just do it."

The name "Hope Within" stimulated from my relationship early with my daughter, and she keeps pushing me, whether she knows it or not.

She is my hope within.

Just keep trying.

Remember the saying?

Try, fail, try, fail.

But you really fail when you want.

-Stop trying.

-There we go.

I didn't want to be the average non-profit, where it's just like, "Here, take this and take that and go."

I wanted to be able to say, "Take that, take this, and if you need anything else, reach back out."

Or, "What can I do to get you where you trying to go?"

[music] We try to do an event every month where we're giving away, whether it's food, whether it's tall trees, whether it's quality clothing, you know, and just bringing people together, bringing resources, different non-profits together.

You can have addicts there, you can have homeless people there, you can have families who may just need a meal for that night.

And even with the city of Passaic, oh, you have an event?

Here's some donations.

Here, I got this.

Hey, it's just like, I be all over, like, who can I go pick up?

What's going on?

I wish if I could be a superhero, they'll call me teleportation man, 'cause I just wanna teleport everywhere, just, what you need?

How can I do this?

Okay, I gotta go.

Some of the challenges, speaking to a lot of the homeless and the added community out there.

They didn't want to feel like they were a circus act.

We make them feel human, because that's what they are.

Everything you see is for you.

Take what you need.

Take what you want.

Something that I get from Passaic is just sincere help.

People there don't care about just feeding you.

They're going to ask you tomorrow, the next day, did you eat as well?

And that's what makes Pesaic so, so special to me because I have about ten different ladies I call mama, and they treat me exactly like a son.

Gained most of my weight out here.

'Cause everybody, "Come through and grab a plate.

Come through and grab a plate."

You got my numbers, ladies.

Y'all know.

- I got your numbers.

- Once we get all that together, we're gonna get it together.

- All right.

- All right?

- God bless you.

- Love you, ladies.

- God bless you all.

- Thank you.

I will always go... any mile just to make sure people don't have to go through what I went through.

38 Osborne Terrace in Newark New Jersey is currently under various change that will be hope with then's first women in transitional home.

The difference between transitional homes and a shelter.

Shelters are more so just sleeping areas.

I wanted to really have homes in place where you felt like it was your home.

I know most of these programs out here in these different cities are rotating doors.

This isn't just a place you're in, it's not just a place you're at, but this is a place you need to be and you want to be.

Our key is not to let you slip through the cracks.

When I was released from DIFE as at the age of 19 and again had nowhere to pretty much lay my head, I parked outside a little bit down the road from this actual house we in and my brother happened to walk out that morning and saw me sleeping in my car.

He knocked on the window and said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I got nowhere to go, bro."

And he said, "Why didn't you call me?"

And I just said, "Pride hurt."

And he said, "Go get your room together."

And this room here was one of my rooms that I was staying in for a few years to get on my feet.

Here we are now and pretty much almost done with our women and children transitional home and it means a lot to me.

When I tell people when we go through things, don't be afraid to find that light switch.

Don't let people hide it from you.

Activate your light.

And what I do by helping them activate it is giving them true love, giving them what they missed.

How are you?

I am blessed.

Can't complain.

Had to come back home.

I can probably help you locate your light switch, but I need you to turn it on.

Because if I turn it on, who's to say you wouldn't care about it going back out?

The hope is the current to turn on that light in you.

Sometimes it takes that one person or them few people to help change someone.

My goal is to go visit Passaic in the next few years and visit these homes and just keep motivating and keep strengthening the city because the people are the city.

Once we start strengthening the people, then the city gets stronger.

Now we head to South Jersey in Ocean County where Christian Kane and his family's lives changed when their son Gavin suffered a brain injury, leaving him unable to walk or talk.

Christian now works tirelessly to make his community of Toms River inclusive and accessible to those with disabilities.

And as he says, just because you have a traumatic brain injury doesn't mean the game is over, it just means it's a different game.

When you're typical, you take a lot of things for granted, a lot.

But in the blink of an eye, just like us, we went from a total typical family to now being a family that's in a world of special needs.

And you don't know when it's your time.

You have no idea.

[ indistinct chatter ] Until you're in it, you don't really realize why this playground area is so important.

Ha, what'd I do?

Uh, Dad.

Hopefully a loving husband most of the time.

Mathematics teacher at Tonsor High School North for 28 years.

That's teacher of the year stuff right there.

28 years, no teacher of the year award.

All right, here we go.

And the co-founder of the Tonsor Field of Dreams.

Gavin King is our 11-year-old son.

He suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was only 19 months old.

Prior to that, he was a handful.

Walked very quickly.

Not a big talker, but he was just willing to do anything.

And unfortunately, when that accident occurred, it took its physical ability from him, but not his mental ability.

And I can't believe it's been this long already, 'cause now he's 11.

He's still that fun-willing kid.

His drive, his willingness to work is unmatched.

He's very similar to his mother in that case.

He's just-- he works so hard to try to be better every day.

Two.

Release it.

Due to the nature of the injury, Gavin cannot walk or talk.

Where does it hurt more?

The wrist part?

I work on the physical part just because he's so big.

Our goal is to get him to be able to sit correctly.

Seven, eight, nine... Good job.

And then, you know, be able to walk and be able to move around his home and be able to do things that we take for granted.

Open up your hand.

Yeah, yeah.

Can you try to do that with Lefty?

Just try.

Yeah, that's our lives.

It's a lot.

It's a truckload, but it's worth it because it's the only way that we know how to live.

You're thrown into this world of special needs that we had no idea about because all our children were totally typical and now all of a sudden you realize like oh my gosh there's there's nothing out here but when you really think about the world of special needs there isn't a place that you can go and not be stared at and be able to have fun and the most important part is to be included to have full inclusion that people don't really care what you look like or what you can do you're just there to have fun like with everyone else and there isn't a place like this in Ocean County.

We had this playground that we built here at this home so that no matter what your ability is you can play have fun and we noticed that other equipment was tough because everything's narrow and he's got a wheelchair and then if you get the wheelchair to a spot in the playground how do you get the wheelchair back down and then how do you get him positioned in either the swing or the slide and that was when he was only six or seven that's when he was tiny that's when we knew like oh boy we got a problem here.

There are so many people that stay at home rather than going out.

They feel like they're getting stared at so they stay home and the idea of the field of dreams is to give those people who have a special need a place to go to and at that time, I want to say four and a half years ago, at that time, I didn't have anything.

The only thing I had at that time was my story and the passion at how important this is and people bought in.

I knew that the money was going to be significant, especially with the way we wanted to do it and we were having some issues in regards to paying for some equipment and we came up with this whole idea of this Team Gavin, quote-unquote, like wildfire.

I mean, we had a Team Gavin day at my high school in which I think like over, you know, 500 people were wearing Team Gavin t-shirts.

So the Field of Dreams, whatever is in your head, think five times that.

Think baseball, think football field, think giant stadium.

That's what it's going to be like.

It's not going to be like your local park down the street, where it has a couple swings and stuff like that.

This is going to be immense.

That's a big task to think that, you know, one county can just simply have everything accessible.

I mean, that's impossible.

But are you at least offering places for people to go?

I have tools for you.

You have to use like a screwdriver or a little of a scissor just to make the hole a little bit bigger.

We're trying to redefine that definition that accessibility should be for everything at all times.

And you shouldn't be concerned about that.

We're still a long way away.

I mean, the number one issue for most special need caretakers, when you go to the bathroom, there may be an issue.

So that's the thing about the field of dreams.

We have everything hopefully taken care of where you don't have to leave.

So if there's a bathroom issue, the caretaker can take care of their loved one as if they were home.

We have an autistic quiet corner where a parent can now deal with their child, but then also re-enter back into the activity that they were having an issue with.

You bring somebody with a power chair and all of a sudden it runs out of a battery.

We have power charging stations throughout the complex.

What are the issues and how can we make sure people don't leave?

And in Ocean County it's getting better, but we're hopefully setting the tone to fill dreams of what real true accessibility and inclusion really means.

Come to our facility and we'll show you what accessibility is.

For anyone else who doesn't have a traumatic brain injury or any kind of special need or any kind of disability, you guys take things for granted.

Brushing your teeth, getting up out of bed, turning a page of a book, you all take it for granted.

Gavin struggles with all those things.

There isn't one thing that is easy for him because of the nature of his brain injury, but the thing that he's able to do though is persevere and figure out ways to do those things.

And things that are challenging, he works so hard to minimize that challenge and be able to do things like everyone else can.

Good.

Go crazy.

Just look at his skin.

He's out of control.

With Gav, because of his spirit, how do you say, "Oh, Gav, I really don't want to do that today," or, "Gav, I really don't feel like doing that."

That's impossible.

It's impossible to let that kid down.

You have to be high spirits, and you have to go at 100%.

Gavin has taught me that I can be better than who I am, clear and simple.

He makes you want to be better, doing therapies, or playing games, or the field of dreams, because he works so hard, and he wants to be better.

How could you not then want to work just as hard as he can, and have that inspiration or that drive to be the best you can be.

So simple as that.

He's made me a better dad and a better teacher, a better, you know, person all around.

You could be a varying degree of ability and still be able to appreciate and have a great life.

(soft music) Just because you have a special need, you know, in our case, a traumatic brain injury, doesn't mean the game's over.

It just means it's a different game.

You can experience some of the other extraordinary Jersey residents profiled in the 21 film series at mynjpbs.org/21.

Take a look.

New Jersey, we are the Garden State.

We should elevate that.

What that means is you have to get more involved.

It just feels incredible.

How do you say, "I really don't feel like doing that"?

That's impossible.

It's not about me.

It's not about no individual.

It's about all of us.

And that's going to do it for us.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For all of us here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you next time.

NJM Insurance Group.

Serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Major funding for the 21 film series is in part provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by the PSEG Foundation.

Wow.

It's going to be okay.

[laughing] Is that... Wow.

[laughing] It's going to be okay.

[ Music ] >> Have some water.

>> Look at these kids.

>> How are you?

>> What do you see?

I see myself.

I became an ESL teacher to give my students what I wanted when I came to this country.

The opportunity to learn, to dream, to achieve, a chance to belong and to be an American.

My name is Julia Torriani-Crompton and I'm proud to be an NJEA member.

NJM Insurance Group has been serving New Jersey businesses for over a century.

As part of the Garden State, we help companies keep their vehicles on the road, employees on the job, and projects on track.

Working to protect employees from illness and injury, to keep goods and services moving across the state, we're proud to be part of New Jersey.

NJM.

We've Got New Jersey Covered.

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