February 26, 2021

Good afternoon, everybody – This past Wednesday in the morning we served 136 families, consisting of 273 adults, 176 children and 47 seniors, amounting to 491 people served.  Then in the evening we served another 9 families with 20 adults, 9 children and 3 seniors for a total of 32 people.  This brought us to 145 families in total, with 293 adults, 185 children and 50 seniors, totaling 523 people.  And our beloved delivery people made 44 – yes, 44 – deliveries to people who couldn’t get to the pantry. Despite the fact that we had to close on Wednesday, February 3 due to bad weather, we still averaged 133 families and 483 people a week.  My hat is off to all the volunteers, including teens, who work so hard on Wednesday mornings to get this pantry off the ground every week.  And besides that, a dedicated group gathers on Mondays to pack the boxes that we give out, and another group gathers on Tuesday evenings to pack the bags of produce for the next morning.  Talk about a well-oiled machine.

On Tuesday, February 16 the pantry was featured on the Channel 5 Good Day New York program during their “hero of the day” feature.  They described how hard we work and they showed pictures of the prepared meals we often give to the clients.  The restaurants featured in their pictures were River City Grill and Go Su, and we’re so grateful to all the restaurants around the area who make it possible for our clients to take home delicious meals.  And we’re especially grateful to SPRING Community Partners Co-Director Ellen Crane, who is a professional photographer, for providing perfect pictures to be highlighted on the show.  

We’ve received another huge donation from Doin’ Good in the Hood, chaired by Erica Razek.  She dedicates her life to providing many organizations, including ours, with whatever they need.  We were able to share with her some extra products we had, which she’ll take to another organization.  Then she finds products that we need and brings them to us.  So, it’s good karma all around.  What a hard worker she is.

The bin at Stop & Shop has taken off in a big way.  Maybe some people on this list have bought something for us and left it in the bin.  Last Saturday there was so much food in the bin that Ellen Crane enlisted the help of three Stop & Shop employees to pack everything up and put it into Ellen’s car.  They told her there had been so many donations that they had stored some in the back!  Thanks so much to everybody who is supporting us this way.

Thanks also to Coldwell Banker on Cedar Street.  They’re doing a two-month food drive for us that has generated so much food that a volunteer employee brought some to us this past week, and it looks like they’ll be bringing the donations to us on a weekly basis instead of waiting until the end of March.  Another outpouring of good will.

This coming Saturday, February 27, Ardsley United Methodist Church at 525 Ashford Avenue in Ardsley is doing a food drive for us.  They’ve done this for us even in the cold of winter.  If you’d like to drop something off for us, drop by between 11:00 and 1:00 and they’ll gladly take it off your hands!

February is almost over!