Good afternoon, everybody – This week the pantry broke a record. I wasn’t there, and Benny and I won’t be there for the foreseeable future due to the pandemic, but strong and capable hands have taken the reins and the pantry marches on. This past Wednesday in the morning we served 62 families, including 118 adults, 92 children and 27 seniors. Then in the evening another 9 families were served, including 18 adults, 10 children and 2 more seniors. This brought us to a total of 71 families, 136 adults, 102 children and 29 seniors, making a total of 267 people served. During the month of March we averaged 53 families and 198 people a week. In February, before all this started, we averaged 40 families and 147 people served.
Due to the generous contributions of people on this list and people in the community, and also due to the ongoing commitment of Spring Community Partners, this past Wednesday we were able to give out a Stop & Shop gift card to each client, along with a bag of produce from Feeding Westchester. We registered seven new clients in March. Let’s see how it goes in April.
This Monday we’ll be receiving 80 pre-packaged boxes of food, free of charge, from Feeding Westchester. They’ve obviously been the recipient of much generosity also, to be able to provide many pantries with boxes of free food. Maybe it can happen again in April.
So, this week our clients will receive a Stop & Shop gift card and a box of food. We’re taking this week by week, so we have a definite plan for this coming Wednesday. We’ll see where we go from there.
In Friday’s Enterprise there was an entire article about our food pantry, together with an article about the Hastings food pantry. The Enterprise provides a great service to the Rivertowns. Although we’ve been open for several years, some people still haven’t known about us, so we’ll see if a number of people come to the pantry this Wednesday because they didn’t know about us before. I also predict that people who have been laid off will find themselves looking for a food pantry for the first time ever.
The volunteers at the pantry have developed a routine for providing space between each other and space between the clients. Two volunteers stayed outside with the clients and made sure they stayed six feet apart. Then there’s a table between the volunteers and the clients, so they can pick up their gift card and food without anybody touching hands. The table is wiped with a sanitary wipe between clients. No masks, unfortunately, but with gloves and plenty of hand-washing, it seems to be working out.
Anybody out there have masks for us?
Thanks for the work you’re doing! You can try requesting homemade masks from a local volunteer effort being led by Hastings Sewing Studio: https://hastingssewing.com/
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Meghan, thank you for the tip about Hastings Sewing. I’ve made a note of it! And thank you for helping us!
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Hello, when can we drop off contributions to the food pantry in a safe way for everyone? Do we come At the same you are open or can we make contributions at another time ?
Thank you for all the work you are doing !
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Mary, thank you so much for reaching out to the Pantry. In order to make sure that clients can come and go quickly we’ve been giving out Stop & Shop gift cards. Today we gave a gift card together with boxes of food which were provided free from Feeding Westchester. What we need more than food right now is monetary contributions so that we can continue to offer gift cards until this virus is over. If you could make a donation on our website, dobbsferrypantry.org, it would be a tremendous help at this point. And thank you again for helping us.
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