October 24, 2018

Stephanie Buck, an expressive arts therapist, visited the pantry this morning and ended up working with several of our clients, including a child who came to the pantry with his mother.  Before the pantry started and also after the clients picked up their food, several people sat down with her and drew and talked about their drawings.  This is a volunteer effort on her part and we at the pantry are grateful that she can help the clients in this way.  She’ll be visiting the pantry each week to help any clients who wish to express themselves through art, or who just want to talk a little.

Jen Cadenhead, who helped start this pantry and whose husband built some of our shelves, is now working on her PhD, and will be doing a focus group in the near future with some of our clients in order to talk about nutrition and healthy eating.  We, and our clients, are lucky to have a nutritionist in our midst.

This coming Tuesday we’ll be receiving the first of three collections of food from the Kids Can program at Springhurst in Dobbs Ferry, organized by Nola Long and Sharon Van Engen.  The parents and staff at Springhurst have supported us from the beginning, and we’re grateful that there are such energetic parents and children at Springhurst.  It’s not easy to arrange one of these drives, yet we’ve been getting three deliveries a year for several years.

Boy Scout Troop 55 from Irvington is planning to do a food drive for us at Stop & Shop in the near future, similar to the annual drive done for us by the Dobbs Ferry football team (go Eagles!).  These food drives are very successful for us because the shoppers at Stop & Shop are generous, and the Boy Scouts will be just as irresistible ans the football players.

Also from Irvington, a woman affiliated with the Irvington schools arranged for a friend of hers who is a member of our church to bring containers of milk left behind by the students after lunch.  This morning there were 68 small containers of milk in our refrigerator, all of which were given out by noon.  Otherwise the milk might have gone to waste.

Speaking of milk, this morning we were visited by Matt and Danny of Westchester Milk (they donate milk to us every Wednesday).  They were interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her show, talking about the return of home delivery of milk.  Matt said that they’ll be interviewed by Channel 12 soon also   If anybody wants milk delivered to their home, let me know and I’ll put you in touch.

Next week is Halloween.  We’ll be open both morning and evening.  I may wear a costume, or maybe just a witch’s hat.