The Rural We: Peter Frank
He's working hard to help get food to kids and their families in Hudson during the COVID-19 crisis.
Peter Frank is a prop stylist and set designer who has lived full-time in Hudson for the past five years. His editorial work includes features for House Beautiful, Elle Décor, Real Simple and other publications, and he was formerly a contributing editor at Martha Stewart Living. He has also worked on national advertising campaigns for many leading retailers and brands. Despite an illustrious career, Frank would much rather talk about the nonprofit organizations he’s involved with, especially the Hudson Youth Center.
For the last few years, I’ve been cutting way back on my work as a stylist. Since we moved to Hudson full time and gave up place in city, I’m fortunate that I can work a lot less. It was a gradual shift. Giving up our apartment in New York was the last piece.
I was on board of Hudson Pride Foundation for its first couple of years. I marched as a rainbow girl – “Ultraviolet” — and took on the role of coordinating and organizing the parade. Last year was its 10th year.
Over time, I’ve become increasingly aware of the income inequality in this community. The divide here is a reflection of what’s happening in the country at large. I decided I wanted to do something to support youth in the city. I realized how vital the Hudson Youth Center and its Oakdale Summer Camp were — and how underappreciated they were. I wanted to do something to support it financially and give more visibility to the positive things it does. That’s why I started the Friends of Hudson Youth.
So often, the Youth Department is on the chopping block. Publicly funded childcare should be a right. In Hudson, the Youth Department serves the greatest number of kids, and is a trusted part of the community, something that people really depend on.
The Friends of Hudson Youth’s original mission was to add enrichment programs. We provided money for a music production program, brought in additional computers so computer lab can serve more kids, donated hundreds of books so there’d be a library there. We fund an after-school tutoring program and a summer reading program and have been instrumental in improving and enlarging recreational sports leagues.
Right now, with the pandemic going on, we’re focusing on a meal program at the Youth Center. When the schools closed, there was an urgent and immediate concern that families and kids would need to get food, and we determined that giving out groceries would be more helpful than one meal at a time, but also that we had to bring the food to the people where they were.
We’ve reconfigured the Youth Center to become a giant food pantry. We moved close to 10,000 pounds of food this week. The program is feeding more than 500 people. The infrastructure to handle this has been daunting. Nick Zachos, the director, and his staff are the reason this is happening. I’m holed up at home, but I helping to organize and fundraise as much as I can — the city had no emergency funds to handle this.
I’m also on the committee of The Fund for Columbia County, which has launched two emergency response funds, one for small businesses and one for nonprofits. The Fund has already awarded $60,000 to people doing work around the pandemic. Applications being reviewed on a rolling basis, so we’ve been meeting several times a week on that.
