January 11, 2018

Two of our volunteers have already taken the training for the USDA civil rights requirement.  We’ll all be trained by February.  We’ve determined that a person in a wheelchair can easily participate in the pantry, and we have the USDA poster displayed which shows how a person could lodge a formal complaint against us with the USDA.  I doubt that will ever happen since we welcome everybody to the pantry.

One of our long-time volunteers and supporters had a bar mitzvah for her son.  The centerpiece on each table was a couple of cans of food, decoratively wrapped.  Her husband dropped off the food yesterday, which was immediately put on the shelf and given out.  What an innovative idea!  She had asked us ahead of time what products we’d like, so she sent us a lot of tuna and canned tomatoes – exactly what we needed immediately.  We’re eternally grateful to families who share their life events with us like this.

During the week I was contacted by a woman named Rebecca from the Cornell Cooperative Extension.  She told me that the Teamsters Union had had a food drive which yielded 2,000 pounds of food.  They donated it all to the Extension, and the food was delivered to pantries in Westchester County.  Rebecca herself brought 200 pounds of food to our pantry yesterday, which will be given out over the next few Wednesdays.  We’re appreciative of the fact that the Extension included us on their list of pantries.

I was also contacted by a woman who lives in Greenburgh who wondered how she could help.  I told her we need diapers and baby wipes because there are several clients of the pantry who have children in diapers.  She ordered a huge box of assorted sizes of diapers from Amazon, which was delivered to my house, together with another box of toiletries.  Yesterday when I got home from the pantry there was a huge carton of baby wipes – 27 packs to be exact.  What a generous, caring woman.  She has a baby herself, so she understands how valuable these diapers and wipes are to these struggling mothers.  And she plans on sending donations to us every other month or so on a regular basis.  Several mothers went home with diapers yesterday because of the generosity of this one woman.