Good afternoon, everybody – Yesterday we served 113 families, consisting of 215 adults, 150 children and 39 seniors, for a total of 404 people. The day before Thanksgiving we served 157 families, and I have a feeling we’ll hit those numbers this month also, especially since we’ll be giving out Stop & Shop gift cards on December 16 and 23. We delivered food to 30 families yesterday. Our beloved delivery people were hard at work.
I mentioned last week that Edgemont Rotary Club went to Hunts Point Market last week and bought enough produce for all our families. They delivered it in a truck. And they stayed to help serve the clients. When the pantry was finished we still had some vegetables and fruits left over. Robin Larkins contacted a few restaurants to see if anybody could use the produce. Sergio at Piccola Trattoria (41 Cedar Street, 914-674-8427) not only took the food but returned it yesterday, made into butternut squash soup, pasta alfredo and apple tarts. So our clients got to enjoy the produce two weeks in a row. Thank you, Sergio!
Plan on doing some shopping this weekend at Stop & Shop in Dobbs Ferry. The Dobbs Ferry for Social Justice group is having a four-day food drive for the pantry, organized by Marissa O’Hare and Kevin Messam! From Friday, December 4 through Monday, December 7 you can do your shopping, pick up a few extra items and drop them into the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry box that will be prominently displayed. We’ve had food drives at Stop & Shop before and shoppers have been incredibly generous. I have a particularly good feeling about a drive that goes on for four days. HudCo, the coworking space at 145 Palisade Street, has joined the effort and has collected food for us there, too, thanks to Christy Knell.
And on Saturday, December 5, after you finish your shopping at Stop & Shop, you can drop over to Ardsley United Methodist Church on Ashford Avenue in Ardsley and donate some food for us at their food drive between 10:00 and 1:00. The Ardsley Women’s group at AUMC has done several of these drives for us and Ken Stahn arrives with his car packed to the gills with food for us plus Stop & Shop gift cards and cash. This is the last drive they’ll be doing for a while because it’s hard to do a food drive in the cold, so we’ll really appreciate whatever food they bring to us.
We so appreciate the caring and support of the entire community in Dobbs Ferry. Residents of The Landing are doing a monetary drive for us, and the neighbors of the Walden Woods complex did a collection throughout the month of November, which they just dropped off to us. On top of that, a woman and her son were driving by yesterday, saw the line, and drove to Stop & Shop to buy food for us and bring it right back.
Our cup runneth over but, believe me, we’ll be busy this month and we need all the food and monetary donations we can get. A virtual hug to everyone who’s helping us!
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 