Good afternoon, everybody – Today we served a total of 26 families, including 40 adults, 28 children and 6 seniors.
Berta Diaz of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition was with us again today, although she didn’t arrive until around 11:00, so she missed a lot of the clients. It turns out she did an internship at Cabrini Immigrant Services here in Dobbs Ferry, so she actually knows a lot of the clients. She was able to give out information about the WHC programs anyway (domestic violence, immigration and others), to the people who came late. She also even gave information to the mailman, who may know somebody who needs the services WHC offers. She’s coming back August 16, together with an immigration attorney, and she’ll be able to arrive earlier, so that whoever has questions for that attorney can be helped.
In response to the questionnaires we gave out, we volunteers have been discussing whether to be open from 9:00 to 12:00, as people requested; stay at 10:00 to 12:00, or be open from 9:00 to 11:00. A number of volunteers weren’t thrilled at having to be at the pantry an hour earlier, but we’ll continue to explore the idea.
People also asked for meat, which we’re beginning to offer now that we have a freezer (thanks Mahoney family). They also asked for eggs – that calls for refrigerator storage, not freezer storage, so we’ll have to think about that – a dozen eggs for each family? That’s a lot of refrigerator space. We’ll do it if we can figure it out.
We’ll be getting a lot of produce from the CSA this Sunday – cucumbers, scallions, kale, kohlrabi (need recipes), eggplant, chocolate mint (!) corn and some kind of fruit. This week somebody from the Roots & Wings garden brought in eggplant and cucumbers. So, we have a lot of fresh food for the clients in addition to the shelf-stable foods we’ve always carried.
Summer just flies by – it’s August already!
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 