Dionisio Cucuta and Stephanie Taylor/Cucuta

[00:00] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Chef Dionisio Cucuta 62 years old. Today is Wednesday 16th, 2021. I'm living in New Jersey, and my partner is my wife, Stephanie, and she's my heart.

[00:21] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Hi, my name is Stephanie Taylor Cucuta today. Today is Wednesday, June 16th. I'm here with my husband, who is the recipient of the Rust Berry Foundation Award. I'm going to be speaking to him today to find out more about his background and what inspired him and where we will be going in a future considering. We met about something about 16, 17 years now, married for 14 years. When we first met, we had no idea of where our future would take us. We had no idea that we would be doing the kind of work that we are doing. Dionisio was a chef when I met him in corporate America in New York, and I was an executive assistant working for Citibank. Combined. We still have eight children, and we blended that family and we married. It's been, As I said, 14 years of marriage now and growing up in Harlem. Dionisio I want to ask you how that played a part, because I know, like myself, I grew up in a big league and nurturing and taking care of the slow children and just being part of our village and looking out for one another's children. I know that that kind of impacted me in terms of my nurturing spirit. So I want to ask you, someone who grew up in a similar environment as I did, if not the same environment, how has that or has that played a part in where you are today in your community service ventures?

[02:27] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Well, yes. Growing up, we had similar backgrounds, huge families, very connected to the community. I participated in just about every project that a young youth involved in, whether it was the Boy Scouts, the cadets, basketball, football, martial arts, swimming, track, I was involved. And I seen that those that were around, how they would just push me and give me the tools that was necessary to continue my stride in life.

[03:05] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That's awesome.

[03:06] DIONISIO CUCUTA: So at one point, when I became a young teen and had a child at a young age, I was still in high school. It really struck me that that wasn't enough what I was doing in terms of just being a young parent or student. I had to find a future because I'm not here by myself any longer, Right? It's not about me by myself. So I thought and thought and all my friends I grew up with, they all in the way and going into the service and I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it. I was like, let me give it a shot.

[03:48] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And so is if your friends were going into the service and the different branches of the military, whether it be the Marines or the army or whatever. Is that. Was that what inspired you to join the military, or were there other reasons that may have connected you to wanting to go that route time in your life?

[04:14] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Well, yes, actually. Vietnam at that time, I was growing up. Vietnam was actually the push.

[04:24] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: How so?

[04:25] DIONISIO CUCUTA: A lot of the older guys that mentored me was coming up. They wound up entering and going into the military by way of draft. So they had no choice. And as I seen some of them returning and some not returning, it kind of gave me a thought in the conversations I would hear amongst the military young men. And then my friends that I grew up with, these were like my brothers, you know, they started going into the military, and I was the youngest of the whole group.

[05:03] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So what. What branch did you were in? The Marine Corps.

[05:06] DIONISIO CUCUTA: I was in the Marine Corps, and I. I chose the Marine Corps because of who I am in terms of. Of aggression and being a team player. The Marine Corps is a structured environment that's so different than any other branch. The discipline.

[05:32] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: It's funny that you say that, because I want to fast forward a little bit when I think about where we are today with our nonprofit organization and in particular, the last program that we have brought under our umbrella, which is table to table, which is the feeding distribution of various thousands and thousands of families in our communities. When you just structure and your discipline, and I see how you, when Covid hit, when a horrible pandemic hit last year, and how you just fist and ran with it and started to contact and network with these various groups of people who were willing to distribute and give you food for your community to feed all these people. I see how your discipline plays a big part in that and how your structure plays such a big part in that. Because I still, even though I'm your partner and I'm your wife, I still am amazed every Tuesday when I attend our Tuesday to Tuesday, table to table Tuesdays, and see how everything is so streamlined and how everything is so organized and how all your volunteers, which are very instrumental in this whole thing, how you just got them all together and how they gravitate to you. And it's your structure and your discipline and getting things done that's part of your character that has really, really made this positive. So you can see how your Marine background definitely has played a part in getting that done. So my next question is. Let's talk about. Let's talk about how we actually started our nonprofit organization and how we started dcvp. Tell me what DCVYP stands for.

[07:40] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Okay, so DCVP is Disabled Combat Veterans Youth Program. Now, the reason we came up with that name is, of course, I'm a disabled combat veteran. And at the time that we was putting this together, I was a football coach here in Inglewood, New Jersey. So one of my partners, he was a military veteran as well. And we found that we were working with our football players. But then after the season is over, it's like minimal contact with them. And that's not coaching with the players. With the players. That's not coaching. A coach is. You're a coach on and off the field during the football season and off the football season. What I say is after the football season, because now they got to go back into their academic venture, and we found that several young people were having a difficult time with whatever their situation was.

[08:56] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So would you say that you were not only a coach, that you were also a mentor?

[09:04] DIONISIO CUCUTA: I would say yes, both a coach and a mentor, because in my mind, I'm always taking everything to the next step. Step. There's always a next step, the next level in anything you do. So once we identified that we had a bunch of young football players that were really good young men, how to ground it was, you know, we have to engage with them. We got to show them that we're there. When we push them to make sure they keep good grace, we have to help them. So let me in that direction. If they're having a difficult time with a subject and get them to working with the guidance counselors, all that comes into play, and that's when the mentoring kicks in.

[09:57] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So let me ask you a question. So when you talk about taking things to the next level, that brings me to when you first started this organization. I know in 2010. I remember when one of the things that we spoke about when we first met that I was involved in mentoring when I worked first, you know, working while working for Citibank and prior to that, being involved in Catholic Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and again, just my background with having a lot of nieces and nephews and having that nurturing component to my character. When we first spoke about DC BYP in 2010, and then we actually got incorporated by this Inglewood, by the state of Englewood, rather State of New Jersey in 2013. By then, we not only had the mentoring piece under our belt, but you having been a chef, you also were involved in the Culinary Cadets, where you speak to how you started the classes at Janice Dismas Middle School and how that came about.

[11:12] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Yes. So at the time that I was a football coach, I bring it back to football again. You know how young people were interested in learning how to cook because they knew I was a shit. And at that point, I was retired, disabled, couldn't work any longer. So in my business, hey, if they're asking for this particular trade company, show it to them. So I went and spoke with the superintendent of the schools and spoke with the board of education administrators, and I requested to be able to come into that and create an after school program with young seventh and eighth graders that are looking to be chefs or interested in cooking. And the first, I remember the first week when I first started, I was with 10 young students, seventh and eighth graders. A month later, we had 40 participants that were coming in on a weekly basis. But there was criteria involved. A, you must be on a passing note with your classes and your teachers. I would reach out to the teachers and they would reach out to me.

[12:27] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So they had to have passing classes to be involved.

[12:31] DIONISIO CUCUTA: We would prefer that. However, you know, some young people were having a difficult time. So I can't discriminate, discriminate against just because they're having. My job is to make sure that wherever they have a hard time to help them. Now, if I see a young person that's flatlined completely with nothing but Fs, that's a problem.

[12:50] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Well, let me ask you something that brings me to this question about the arts. So actually, if there's a student who may not be doing that well in school a lot of times, arts, this is something that can help them with their academics. So in essence, this is a win, win situation because let's say one of your students wasn't doing so good in, let's say, English. But all of a sudden they found out that, hey, through Coach Dion's culinary classes and cooking classes, all of a sudden this is where this student is thriving. This could be something that could have encouraged your students or made them do even better in their other academics. So actually, the arts are one of the things that actually bring out a lot of other positive characters and students, including their academics. So that's a wonderful.

[13:42] DIONISIO CUCUTA: It is. Because what happens is young people may be struggling, for example, understanding what they're reading. So what I would do is I would give them a recipe. And the recipe has instructions exactly how much to prepare, how much to cut, how to cut it, and when to start processing that in terms of cooking. It structure. It gives you detailed information which then allows your brain to Kind of inhale it and be able to follow it and just automatically just do what it's saying to do. It's simplicity. Now, when it came to the recipes, I found that a lot of young people were doing much better with algebra because of the breakdown that we utilized for the recipes and converting, you know, into volume or batches. And I would sit there and give them a chart. Like, 8 ounces is considered a cup, which is a half a pound. I had to break it down to them, you know, and I just kept drilling them and drilling them and giving them the understanding of what the difference are between fluid ounces and just ounces. And so they, after a while, they started understanding how the formulas to use.

[15:06] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Well, that's amazing, because when I hear you speaking, even to this day, even though we've been married for 14 years and been together about 18 years, it still amazes me when I see how you combine your discipline and your structure from being a Marine, how you incorporate that into your culinary. You're even teaching math skills while you're doing this. So sometimes when people think about culinary, they wouldn't necessarily think about it with all those components that are involved. So, you know, that's. That's amazing.

[15:46] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Thank you.

[15:46] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Which brings me to another question. Do you or can you think of. Because I know for me, a person, you know, as your wife, your friend first, who was already involved in mentoring. But once I found out about what you were doing and when you started to talk of DC byp, that inspired me to take it to another level. And that's when I started. Remember, you had the man up program already. You already had that, but there was no girl on it. And I decided to bring in the no boys allowed part of our mentoring program. But you actually were my inspiration in keeping my mentoring going. And I've started to realize just how much we did have in common with wanting to help the youth and wanting to just be there for them. I had no idea when we first met that that would be something that we would be so heavily involved in together, you know, as a couple and just, you know, this being our passion, how we would be taking it to this level. So you are part of my inspiration. But can you think of anyone, you know, that inspired you to take the things that you are doing now? For instance, can you think of someone who inspired you to get. You're so acclimated in the community now. You're well known by the mayor, by different politicians, by just the everyday Joe to the 7 11. Everybody knows who Dionisio is. I know Chef Dionisio or Coach Dionisio I'm sure that you know the people in your folks that inspired you, but in particular, can you think of anyone or anybody who inspired you a little more? And you're not obligated to say me, so please not say me. I'm speaking about, you know, from a community standpoint.

[17:50] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Yes. So I want to. I just want to rewind a slight bit and come back to your question. It's something I wanted to just reference when it comes to culinary arts. I want folks to understand with culinary arts, this is what involved really what you're reading, science, mathematics and communication, and also various languages. Okay. And when I say languages, understanding what a reduction and what soigne means and, you know, mise en place. This is a whole nother world.

[18:33] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So you're just not. You're just not cooking. You're actually teaching these children how. What goes into that. And it's deeper than one would think when you just. Okay, Cooking classes are culinary. It's much deeper than people really realize. Unless you are knowledgeable when culinary.

[18:50] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Absolutely. And not only that, it also entails food science, how to handle food handling.

[19:03] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: What are some of the requirements, you know, in terms of, like, could anybody just go in and take a cooking class? Or are there certain requirements that you have to have? Like maybe from the health department or different things or what? Or let me see if I can ask the question a little differently. Are there maybe some things that one would not know about that could help them even further in culinary?

[19:32] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Yes. Like the main components of culinary. Is this. Be like, let's understand something. With culinary. Even for me, we can wind up in your own element, wind up taking everything to the next level and getting creative.

[19:51] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: But are there any specific, like, requirements, or can you just go in and take a culinary class? Do you have to be certified?

[19:57] DIONISIO CUCUTA: No, no. The certificate comes throughout that process.

[20:00] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Okay.

[20:01] DIONISIO CUCUTA: The first thing to go to a culinary school. Let's talk about a school where you. It's accredited. You know, you gotta remember, you gotta have your math and your English and your social studies. Oh, yeah. Your basics have to be. Because if not, then you're required to take that degree of college experience.

[20:21] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That would be more so like if someone wanted to major in color for the classes that you were teaching these children, teaching the youth, like, let's say at Janice Dismas Middle School, we taught the requirements. Of course, they had to be doing well in school and how even the classes could help them. But have you offered to them or, like, kind of certifications when it comes to like, we did it, we did it.

[20:49] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Okay, so let me take you there. When we started, I had the board of health come in with me, okay. And for three weeks, there was no cooking involved. It was all talking about safety in the kitchen, talking about horse playing in the kitchen, talk about contamination of food, talking about if you see something on the ground, on the floor to mop it immediately, safety components. And along that line, it automatically falls in and chimes in. Food safety, the handling of food. Knowing that if you got your hands in chicken with a glove on, for example, and you have gloves on, which you're required to have, are you handling chicken? And let's say you got to go to the next one, it's a shrimp. You got to know that you have to take gloves off, dispose of them, wash your hands, come back, put another pair of gloves on and start that.

[21:53] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So there's a lot of safety components. There's different components, cross contamination. You talk them about that. That's wonderful. Because that can take them away. I mean, even outside of culinary. These are just good, good habits to.

[22:04] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Have and good skills to have, survival skills. Also knowing that something is extremely hot, that you gotta let that for 10 minutes. It's called the carryover because it's still cooking. After 10 minutes it's gonna stop cooking. Now it's at room temperature. Now you can put that in the refrigerator. It's science.

[22:23] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That's wonderful.

[22:24] DIONISIO CUCUTA: That's the piece that I'm talking about. So the requirement, you learn that generally just throughout the cooking piece, we had our young people that were helping us several years ago when they. We were doing the food for the seniors we want to help Savinca would come into the church and actually administer those certification exams.

[22:46] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: So if you would, let's talk about that for me, because there was a moment in time where when we gather out of Mount Calvary Baptist Church, where we did a lot of the ministry that we were involved in was for feeding elderly and the shut in. And through our program, and we had partnered with Mount Calvary, we had the youth working with us.

[23:16] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Correct.

[23:17] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And I can remember when we had the help folks come to the church to actually give classes and people got their certification, even the. Not just the youth, but certain members of our church, that ministry, it was a requirement that they knew certain things. And you also brought this to the table. This was another part of your. So which brings me back to the question because, you know, I'm very proud of you. And without people in the community that may have giving you some direction, said, hey, Dionisio I see you have this vision. I see you have this. You know, maybe they led you in this direction or that direction. Is there anyone that you might. That comes to mind that might have been instrumental or who inspired you?

[24:07] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Yes, there's one particular individual that I worked for, and that's before we got married. And so, well, we actually weren't married, but that was Mr. Jeff Canada for.

[24:25] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: The Harlem Children's Zone.

[24:27] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Jeff Canada. Mr. Jeff Canada, who was the CEO and founder of the Harlem Children's Zone. Mr. Canada was a man about the community, a man about dignity, a man about structure, a man about development, a man about going to the last drop of blood, the man that would help you if you were stuck, the man that wouldn't tolerate no shenanigans, that's the person that really pushed. When I watched him develop and watch how he was giving back to 10,000 young people in Harlem with grace and agility, I just, like, that was what I wanted to do. And I had already been doing that because I had been working for the Harlem Children's Zone at that time. In fact, he had me. I was assigned to the gang units in the developments, in the housing developments, because I had a connection with the young people.

[25:33] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And this is in Harlem.

[25:34] DIONISIO CUCUTA: In Harlem. So, yeah, that's the man that really inspired me to take it all the way to the door.

[25:40] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That's great.

[25:41] DIONISIO CUCUTA: And, you know, and bring everybody with you that's want to be on board, and that's great. You know, it's amazing. So, yes, Jeff Canada, he is the one that I observed, and I was like, that's what I want to do.

[25:55] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Well, that's great, because it seems like when you speak about his characteristics and the different things that he brought to the table, that you took a lot of those things and brought it with you when you came here when you relocated to New Jersey. I see a lot of those same characteristics in yourself. So that was great. He was like a mentor to you. And as we often speak about, hopefully someone will see the things that you are doing. And one of the children that we come in contact with, be it through mentoring or football or culinary, you know, and they'll remember, hey, I remember this guy, Dionisio Cucuta who was, you know, he was no nonsense, but he had a big heart, and he was dedicated, and he, you know, really went the extra mile for me, and hopefully you'll be able to inspire somebody just like Mr. Canada did with you.

[26:53] DIONISIO CUCUTA: So I just want to say that I had no idea about the Russ Berry foundation, nor about the award. I had no clue. When Covid took over, I just went in food and security mode because I know at that time, no more mentoring, no coaching.

[27:19] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Right. We had to shut that down.

[27:21] DIONISIO CUCUTA: So we shut it all down and I went into the very next thing that I. I know. And people gotta eat.

[27:27] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Sure.

[27:28] DIONISIO CUCUTA: And I always knew that food insecurity was definitely a year round process. All year round, folks are gonna need food. So I automatically went to table to table rescue organization. I called Julie Kenner and I explained to her that I needed some food over here and she was on board because I had been dealing with her quite some time at Mount Cavalry. So when I called her, it was a no brainer. Let's do it. Dionisio I'm thinking, you know, get through the Inglewood community. This is where we live. This is what we about. You know, we did it. First. First day, we did it. 350 families. It took us 30 minutes with the curbside pickup. And as time started going on, I started looking at the entire site and I started, well, let's do walk ups for those that do not drive.

[28:33] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And where exactly did. What church are we at?

[28:38] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Okay, so we're doing this at the first Baptist church of Englewood at 350 Inglewood Avenue in Inglewood, New Jersey. First Baptist Church has opened their doors. I mean, until today. They're so welcoming and so hospitable. I love it. Anything I ask for, within the reasons it's there, it's available, it's never any issues. So we took that and I looked at it and we did the curbside because curbside was the biggest thing during the pandemic. So I said, let's do a curbside pickup. This is what we're going to do. I remember, you remember, I stayed over there by that church once. We found. I found that. That we can, you know, that would be the site. I stayed there for about six hours just trying to figure out how I'm going to do this. So what I did with curbside pickup, we got to make sure that the traffic is right and we don't have any incidents. So what I did was I went to the chief of police of Inglewood. Hey, I'm doing. Can you help me out? Chief of police, Chief sufference. Hey, yeah, Dionisio Look, I'm gonna send you a map. And this is how you line up the folks. So like that we don't have. No. Everyone's safe and the traffic flow continues.

[29:56] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Can you just express this again? Because, you know, again, I'm still so amazed at how streamlined it is and how organized it went and how effortlessly it flows. Every Tuesday, you're feeding thousands and thousands of families. And the volunteers are just so. Everybody's so on board and so happy and has such a positive attitude. It's just amazing to watch it. And even though I'm a part of it sometimes, I'm just still to this day in awe about how you made this happen. So can you just explain the process more?

[30:31] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Okay, yeah. So the process is just this simple. You look at what you're trying to do, how you're trying to do it, and why you. So for me, it's like this. I look at it, okay, we gotta feed people. I know that we just can't feed them anyway. Just haven't come in there and just bombard.

[30:52] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And then with COVID and everything, talk about the no touch and how.

[30:57] DIONISIO CUCUTA: So this is what we did. We said, well, I gotta have folks registered. So, like that. That'd make it easier for us and for them. So we know how much food to distribute according to how we can package it.

[31:09] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: You got folks registered?

[31:10] DIONISIO CUCUTA: I got folks registered on our website. Indie Scan is a piece of our website. Okay, would you go to our website, dcvp.org, go to registration. You'll see Indy scan. You open it up, it takes about a minute and a half to register. There's detailed questions. I don't go into depth about how much money you make or the demographics. Right now if you ask somebody about how much money they make and they lost their job or their business, it's not going to be a nice outcome.

[31:38] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: The bottom line is we feed whoever needs food.

[31:41] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Right. Also, we created the structure for the curbside pickup, which can go about. It's about 15 blocks in total in a radius. And it gets lined up every week that way. So we have that for the undocumented, basically, or the folks that live right next door to the church do that. Folks that do not drive the walk ups where they can come get on their line and immediately come pick up once they get scanned through the Indy scam, pick up their food and go home. Now, that line, we can do up to 200 families because they line up as soon as they arrive. We immediately serve them. They don't wait, but they're in the heat now. So you got the walkups, you got the curbside pickup. We got four to six tables in front of this curbside pickup with tents. We got the teams there that distribute to the, to the vehicles every Vehicle. Once we register them with a post, it will put down. If it's four people, it's one family. We'll put it on the windshield of the car. So if you look down and you see 100 cars, you can see the blue or the yellow or the green potion. We know that they're ready to pick.

[32:53] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And your volunteers know what those colors coded means, Whether it's one family, two family, three family.

[32:59] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Correct. So when the vehicles start pulling in, one person to dictate, hey, five families, four families, and then you got three other people on the other on the right hand side of the vehicle loading up the car.

[33:13] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That's amazing.

[33:13] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Each vehicle takes about maybe 40 seconds at the most. 40 seconds, unless there's a little hiccup or. But usually, you know, 40 seconds in there, out, it's structured. The police are there helping us out, closing off the block, they go straight, make a right or go straight up the gut up the middle, as they say in football. So that piece there works. Now on top of all that, we have our volunteers that all have folks that they know that are sick and shut, can't get out. They come to us, they tell us, I got 15 families. We note it, they, after they're done with their volunteer at the site, they're going to deliver food to those in need. So we have a three way distribution. Distribution three way. We got the curbside pickup, we got the walk ups. And then amongst ourselves to include you and I, we go and we service families that we know are hurting. Now the good thing about it, the good thing about it is that we're servicing an entire county, if not the state. What I mean by that, we're basically predominantly servicing the three, the third and fourth region of Bergen county, which would be the northern portion of Bergen county from Paramus, all up and across.

[34:48] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: That's awesome. Well, well, not to cut you short, but I wonder what everything. All these different communities that you're serving throughout New Jersey, throughout. Are you serving Burgenfield, you're serving Newark? Tell me, give me an idea of throughout all this interaction and all these different people that you've served, what has made a big impact on you? Give me an idea on me is when you think about all these people, you think about the different people that you serve throughout these communities because it's in various communities. Give me an idea of what you would say made a big impact on you.

[35:35] DIONISIO CUCUTA: A big impact on me is that every week I'm seeing that the numbers are fluctuating up and up and up. I'M getting more calls from other nonprofits that need help. When I see that, that hits my heart because I know I'm touching families. I know that we can help folks know that they can come to us for help without having a second thought. But we don't reject anyone. And the biggest thing I want to tell a quick story. So at the beginning, about the middle of the pandemic, there was a young person, must have been about 9 or 10 years old. Every week he would be in the vehicle with his mom.

[36:22] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Yes.

[36:23] DIONISIO CUCUTA: And then his little brother. I won't forget it. Hilarious. And I said, hey, coach. I told my name Coach. He tells me every week. So one time I came up to say hi to him and I see he had a laptop in his hand. So I'm thinking he just on Netflix or whatever. He's like, no, coach, I'm on virtual.

[36:43] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: I'm like.

[36:45] DIONISIO CUCUTA: And he's literally doing virtual.

[36:47] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Doing his homework.

[36:48] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Doing his homework or doing a virtual class.

[36:50] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Wow.

[36:51] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Picking up food with his mom.

[36:52] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Wow.

[36:53] DIONISIO CUCUTA: And this kid was with his mom every week. So that right there impact me that even a young person.

[37:02] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Yes.

[37:02] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Was out there and understood the necessity of being on that line without getting off doing his work.

[37:11] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: And speaking of the people in your community, if you had one thing that you could say to someone in your community or some of these people that you serve, what is it that you would say to them?

[37:26] DIONISIO CUCUTA: That I serve, or just people in general that I want to acknowledge some.

[37:31] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Of the people in the community that you serve. What? Give me an idea because I know how passionate you are about your volunteers. Because without, there would be no us. But my question to you is if you could say anything to the communities, the various communities that you serve, what would it be?

[37:50] DIONISIO CUCUTA: I want to let the communities know that we're here. We're not stopping until the food runs out. And even then we're going to let them know that we'll find a way to make it happen. Finally, I just want to say one thing that I want to add on with this table to table food distribution. It hit home. It hit home for so many. So like I said at the beginning, there's always a bigger picture. And I just want to let everyone know the bigger picture is that we're looking to go into the farming industry to make sure we don't run out of food, to be able to provide good, organic food for those in need. Turn that farm into a research center for schools so young people can understand what the difference is between organic, good growing items, plant Based items, what it entails, how to make honey, how to make, you know, how to use grapes into making your own marinades and wines and so on and so forth. That is healthy. One thing I want to do is I want to work with autism. Autism. These young people is so therapeutic for them out there in the farming environment. The disabled, veterans, the seniors. There's a host of groups of people that can utilize this. And I just want to be able to make a difference throughout the state and not the nation. I'm not afraid I'll jump in with this farm. This is the biggest, biggest piece of my dream is because I really want to get this up and running to help people help themselves, create jobs and continue bonding, having people bond. My volunteers, I gotta say, my volunteers, I take Tuesdays. Those are God sent people.

[40:12] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Absolutely.

[40:13] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Each and every one of them are God sent people.

[40:17] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Without them, we couldn't do what we're doing.

[40:19] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Their love, their caring, their dedication, their dedication, just their humble and the bonding that we created there amongst us.

[40:28] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Amazing.

[40:29] DIONISIO CUCUTA: It's a ministry now. We became a ministry. And this is a group of worship houses. These are non profits. For example, real quick, I gotta say it. First Baptist Church, amazing. For hosting it. First Presbyterian Church for bringing their whole group and their leader, Richard Hong, who's constantly there with us. Hands on, say St. Peter's Prep, sending the students. Mount Olive Baptist Church. I'm talking about community, Metro, Metro Community Church. I'm talking about Ebenezer Baptist Church, Bergen Family Center, Inglewood Rotary Club. I'm talking about Janet Sharma with the age. I'm talking about the youth that just participate, just come in and want to help. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about my son. My son, 18 years old. When we first moved here, he was the one that kind of encouraged me to do this. He was like, dad, you're retired. And after he got, became, got all his friends and became a part of the community, he's like, dad, we need help here.

[41:41] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Wow. So he's the one that pushed me as well.

[41:44] DIONISIO CUCUTA: Correct. And until this day, I thank him because you know, and I think you know, our heavenly father thank God for everything and all that he's flourished me, absolutely.

[41:58] STEPHANIE TAYLOR CUCUTA: Because without him, nothing is possible again.

[42:01] DIONISIO CUCUTA: I had Liz Corzine.