Good afternoon, everybody – Yesterday we served 138 families with 275 adults, 169 children and 49 seniors, for a total of 493 people. Our hardworking delivery people made 47 deliveries.
Many of our volunteers have now had their first vaccine, and will be receiving their second shots in a couple of weeks. And quite a few of the pantry’s clients who are 65 and older confirmed that they received their first vaccines this past Saturday at the Embassy Club in Dobbs Ferry, sponsored by the Village of Dobbs Ferry. We’re getting there folks!
I was thinking about Easter a few days ago, and I couldn’t remember what Easter was like a year ago. I checked the posts on our website from April of 2020, and Easter wasn’t even mentioned. It was the height of the pandemic, and we weren’t even sure we could stay open. On the Wednesday before Easter last year we were amazed that we served 81 families. And we were trying to provide families with Stop & Shop gift cards every week, as people lost their jobs one after another.
We’ve come so far in one year. And we have managed to stay open every week since then (except for one week due to bad weather) with the stalwart help of a dedicated crew of volunteers, many of whom are affiliated with Spring Community Partners. The outpouring of help from every corner of the community has been mind-boggling. It was worth looking back to what was going on a year ago to feel the warmth of the generosity that has kept us going all this time. Many of the people on this list have carried us along, and hopefully will continue to follow us.
We’ve been helped by so many organizations out there. New to us is the Sharing Shelf. Volunteer Gretchen S. is in regular touch with that group, which is based in Port Chester, and their latest offering is to provide the daughters of our pantry clients with holiday dresses, tights and shoes. This is another all-volunteer organization that reaches out throughout the county to find ways to help.
The pantry has a well-organized team of volunteers who are at South Church every Monday morning, waiting for deliveries and packing the boxes that we give out on Wednesdays. And many of the same volunteers arrive early on Wednesday mornings to set up all the tables and food for the clients, who arrive a little before 10:00. And there’s another group of regular volunteers who gather at South Church on Tuesday evenings in order to pack bags of produce to be given out the next day. Everybody pitches in wherever and whenever they can. My gratitude to all of you.
They’re talking about opening schools every day some time in April. We’ll lose a crop of teenagers, mostly children of the Spring Community Partners volunteers, who have been helping set everything up on Wednesday mornings. They then help clients by loading their food into carts and escorting them to their cars. Those teens deserve a virtual hug, and we wish them well as they return to in-person school. And I know other volunteers will be with us to take their places on Wednesday mornings.
Hope everybody got to enjoy this 65-degree day! Spring is coming!
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 