The Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry continues to march along, each week receiving more clients. Yesterday we served 109 families (last week it was 106) with 227 adults, 168 children and 35 seniors, totaling 425 people served. Of the nine new families registered, six were from out of the area. They were served (we never send anybody away empty-handed) and referred to pantries in their area. The other three families are from around here and may continue with us in the future.
Once again, in addition to their food and gift cards, the clients took home prepared food from Harpers/On the Line; soup and bread from MadeByRK; produce, bagels, cookies, milk and cheese donated by Fable Farm (which will be our weekly CSA in the summer); and yogurt provided by a generous donor.
They’ve extended the deadline for filling out the census form, and the Pantry will be working with the Village of Dobbs Ferry Sustainability Task Force to encourage people who come to the Pantry to fill the form out.
Feeding Westchester, the organization which provides low-cost food and other assistance to pantries and soup kitchens throughout Westchester (nationally it’s Feeding America) has a Zoom meeting every Thursday. Today I participated and learned that during the month of April they provided 2,000,000 pounds of food to pantries, including us. Ellen Klein, from our pantry, orders shelf-stable food and produce from them on a regular basis, and so do many other pantries in the County. A new idea they have is to offer virtual nutrition classes for clients over Facebook Live, during which a recipe is made and discussed. If they go through with it, we’ll see if any of our clients are interested in learning more about nutrition.
We’ve received many donations from individuals in the community by way of the PayPal feature on our website (www.dobbsferrypantry.org). We continue to rely on these donations as we continue serving more and more needy families in our area. Hopefully it will come to an end at some point, and we can return to our client-choice pantry the way we have for years. Until then, though, thanks and thanks again to all the people (many on this list) who are helping us help those families.
Happy Mothers’ Day, everybody!
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 