ROBBINSVILLE: ONE Project unites different races, religions, cultures

By Jennifer Kohlhepp, Managing Editor
   ONE Project aims to bring the community together to look at and address the underlying causes of social problems such as hunger, poor education, drug abuse, and inequality. ONE Project is a faith and community coalition, based out of Robbinsville, organized to address social needs through education and volunteerism.
   ”The essence of the ONE Project is to address these critical concerns in a way that brings different races, religions, and cultures together,” founder Amman Seehra said. “We believe people are at their best — efficient and effective — when they work together.”
   ONE Project’s kickoff event took place July 26 at Robbinsville High School. The project brought together over 350 people to provide 40,000 nutritious meals to low-income children in the community.
   ”The NJ Hunger Project is a collaboration between the ONE Project with two other nonprofit organizations, Feeding Children Everywhere (FCE) and Mercer Street Friends Food Bank,” Mr. Seehra said. “We teamed up with FCE to purchase a lentil casserole meal. The beauty of the meal is that it is nutritious, non-perishable, and best of all, only costs 25 cents per meal.”
   The organizations provided a high-energy atmosphere for volunteers with music, a free raffle in which they gave away 50 gift cards valued over $1,200, and a food truck from Rosalita’s in Freehold selling tacos, nachos, and other food. For kids, the Robbinsville Fire Department brought a fire truck, the Robbinsville Police Department brought a police car, and the organizations created a drawing station where they could color the boxes that the meals would be sent to Mercer Street Friends in.
   ”After we packaged the meals, we delivered them to Mercer Street Friends Food Bank in Ewing, which will distribute them via the ‘Send Hunger Packing’ program,” Mr. Seehra said. “This program targets low-income kids who have a hard time finding three meals a day. The school lunch and school breakfast programs help these extremely-low income kids when they are in school, but how do they find food to eat when not in school? The ‘Send Hunger Packing’ program gives these children a backpack full of nutritious food to help them over weekends and long school breaks. The 40,000 meals that we packed on July 26 will go a long way to helping feed those hungry children.”
   The ONE Project’s next endeavor will be to help the New Jersey Education Project.
   ”That will essentially be a book and school supplies drive in late September to be donated to a school in Trenton,” Mr. Seehra said. “This project will be run and organized by The ONE Project Youth Council and the project lead is Nate Lecompte, of Lawrence High School Class of 2015.”
   ONE Project started with separate conversations Mr. Seehra had with a couple friends and his wife, Fizza, who he has known since childhood.
   ”I have talked about creating a service based nonprofit for about two years and just trying to find the right direction,” he said. “I started with the idea of creating a service-based Sikh organization that would focus on Sikh youth collaborating with other religious youth groups but I thought the focus was too narrow. I also thought it was counterintuitive to limit it to Sikh youth when the point was to work with other religious groups.”
   Mr. Seehra also consulted with Pastor Dan Greco, of Lifetree Community Church, who he plays basketball with twice a week.
   ”I consulted him on his thoughts on how to integrate community service into pre-established and new religious groups,” Mr. Seehra said. “We had a few sit-down meetings to brainstorm ideas and timelines. The last piece of the puzzle was during the holiday season when another childhood friend, Kiran Gill, who is the president of PARS Environmental in Robbinsville, mentioned that she went to a interfaith service in Delaware that really brought the whole community together and wanted to do that here in New Jersey.”
   While researching the community service events in the area, Mr. Seehra realized two things.
   ”One, there are a lot of events that people don’t know about or are limited to one particular group and two, many are either inefficient and poorly researched/organized or they only superficially address issues,” Mr. Seehra said. “I wanted to have events that were cost-effective, high-energy, addressed pressing needs, and most importantly brought the local community together. That led me to create the basis for the ONE Project with my co-founders, Fizza Seehra, Kiran Gill, and Dan Greco.”
   The board currently consists of six people and three council leaders from the Youth Council. The Youth Council is a group of high school leaders from schools throughout central New Jersey that have organized over 60 high school volunteers and have the opportunity to creatively mold projects and initiatives within existing projects.
   The Youth Council leaders are Kabir Suri, a Lawrence High School Class of 2015 student; Chaitanya Asawa, a West Windsor Plainsboro High School South Class of 2014 student who is now a Stanford University Class of 2018 student; and Arnav Sood, a West Windsor Plainsboro High School South Class of 2014 student who is now a New York University Class of 2018 student.
   The six board members are Mr. Seehra, senior program specialist at the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service; Ms. Seehra, director of Strategic Analytics and Customer Management at Johnson & Johnson; Mr. Gill, president of PARS Environmental Inc.; Mr. Greco, lead pastor at Lifetree Community Church; Sachdeep Arora, project engineer with Arora & Associates PC; and Kelly Crisci, partner and retirement/insurance planner with Kaizen Financial Group LLC.
   ”We have partnered with over 30 local businesses and church groups to bring in volunteers and provide funding for events,” Mr. Seehra said. “We are constantly expanding our network each week.”