Good afternoon, everybody – yesterday we served a total of 25 families, including 43 adults, 36 children and 6 seniors.
We’re eternally grateful to Springhurst School, and have been for years. This year they’re doing their Kids Can campaign again, wherein the students bring in food for the pantry three times a year. Yesterday Nola Long, the parent who is organizing the drive this year, brought in eight huge boxes full of food, plus cleaning supplies and a couple of boxes of diapers. We sorted and put everything away and she took the boxes back again to use for their next campaign, which will be in February, followed by one in May. Nola and the other parents who worked with her are very hard workers.
Plus, Sara Sellitti and Barbara Miglio (Sara is a parent and Barbara is a speech pathologist at the school) have been working for a couple of years on a project called COMPOST KIDS. This project teaches the students about how not to waste food. To that end, they’ve started collecting the foods the children don’t take at lunch, gathering it together and delivering it to the pantry twice a week. It’s still at the experimental stage, but so far custodian Jose Soto has brought us whole apples, sliced apples and yogurt (which he put into the refrigerator). And the kids help collect the food, so they know it’s going to the pantry. So, the kids learn about ways to use still-edible leftover food; perfectly good food doesn’t go into the garbage; and our clients get to take it home and enjoy it. What a great and educational idea they came up with!
Believe it or not, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Cabrini Nursing Home is collecting food for us for Thanksgiving, and they already know they’ll be providing us with twelve turkeys. And we volunteers are working on making Stop & Shop gift cards available for the clients, plus decorative tote bags that they can continue using. After that, Christmas will be upon us in a second. What a whirlwind!
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 