Lily Belle Poling, Contributing Photographer

Kicking off their first “Food and a Film” event, nonprofits Newhallville fREshSTARTs and Best Video Film and Cultural Center teamed up to bring the Life Haven shelter in Fair Haven a hot dinner and film screening. 

Last Friday, seven volunteers — dressed in typical waiter outfits — served homeless women and children dinner as they screened the new “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” film.

“I was almost going to cry when I was getting dressed [for this],” Marcus Harvin, founder and president of fREshSTARTs, said. “It just feels so beautiful. We wanted to get food to other people, and we’re helping to make the dreams a reality.”

The organizations plan to offer the dinner-and-a-movie experience to shelters across Connecticut.

For dinner, fREshSTARTs served a charcuterie platter alongside jerk or fried chicken, rice and beans and carrots and spinach. During the movie, which was played on a large projection screen from Best Video, volunteers handed out typical movie theater candies and popcorn. 

The organization already provides food to the Life Haven shelter three times a week, but this was their first time dressing up as waiters to provide people an immersive food service experience, according to Babatunde Akinjobi, a vice president of fREshSTARTs. 

For Akinjobi, the opportunity to serve these women and children inspired gratitude, and he was excited at the prospect that some of the Life Haven residents may be experiencing an event like this for the first time. 

He said that the dinner-movie experience allows fREshSTARTs to provide people a “new sense of importance” that simply dropping off food at a shelter cannot match. The nonprofit intentionally planned to wait on the women and children to provide an experience grounded in “dignity.” 

The other fREshSTARTs vice president, Adam Rawlings, echoed Akinjobi, adding that this event was about “more than just food;” it was about allowing the women and their children to have an experience that may feel like a “real weekend.”

“It was exciting to know that somebody other than us cared and wanted to put something together for the ladies,” Yasmine Zayas, who works at Life Haven, said. 

She added that, on their own, Life Haven doesn’t have the capacity to put together events like the one fREshSTARTs and Best Video coordinated. 

Life Haven and fREshSTARTs did not permit the News to interview any of the women living inside the shelter.

Julie Smith, executive director of Best Video, said one of her goals is to expand screenings outside of their physical location in Hamden. This event, she said, was one of the first efforts in leaving its  “bubble.”

Life Haven Inc was incorporated in 1983 to provide services to homeless women with children.