Thus far, autumn has lashed us with more rain than we could use — I’m taking those seven out of eight washout weekends personally — cheating us of too many of those sun-filled afternoons of gently falling leaves that signify the coming of Thanksgiving, a time of gratitude and sharing.
Time, Once Again, to Give What You Can
As you begin planning for the Season of Giving, note that it’s the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry’s Season for Asking.
Our pantry depends largely on donations of cash and food to fulfill its mission of helping our neighbors. We are fortunate to be supported by local groups, including churches and synagogues, civic organizations, businesses, and youth organizations, and by people like you, who cannot sit by when others need help.
Food donations stay more or less steady throughout the year, but cash donations decline significantly from spring through mid-November. As you know, inflation has hit hard this year, especially when it comes to food prices, making it even more difficult for our clients to feed their families.
If you’d like to donate, you can do it using PayPal, a debit card or a credit card, and we also accept checks. Please make your check payable to the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry and mail to: Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry, South Presbyterian Church, 343 Broadway, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522. All monetary donations are tax deductible.
Here I am with Rosemary King and Mary Toomy of The Scarsdale Woman’s Club, longtime supporters of the pantry. Rosemary and Mary, who also volunteers at the pantry, brought the club’s latest cash donation to the pantry.
These 14 boxes once held bananas, but now they’re filled with all kinds of nonperishable foods for our clients. Feeding Westchester, a food bank, the county’s Smart Commute Program, and Stop & Shop collaborated on a weeklong “Stuff-a-Bus” food drive. Collection bins were placed in Stop & Shop stores in Westchester, including the one in Dobbs Ferry, with the goal of stuffing a Bee-Line bus full of food to fight hunger in Westchester.
They Learn By Doing
We are continually touched by the generosity and imagination of our young donors who are taught early on about helping those in need.
Share Your Wish in Irvington recently sent us $17.27 that Annabelle Brown and her friends collected for the pantry at her 9th birthday party. Rebecca Schleifer, president of Share Your Wish, said in a letter to the pantry, “Our goal is to teach, share, and inspire children about helping others.”
Woodlands Community Temple has long conducted food drives to benefit our pantry, and children in the congregation pitch in. Together, adults and children collect food, check the expiration date on packages, and transport the food to the pantry, using this as a teaching moment about caring for others.
And every Halloween, the parents of children attending the Community Nursery School at South Church stage a Halloween Hoot party for the children. The price of admission? Ghostly food donations for the pantry. The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have been regular contributors to the pantry, and you are not spending enough time at Stop & Shop in Dobbs Ferry if you haven’t witnessed a parent showing a child how to place food in the collection boxes for the pantry.
Shout-out to Five Area Churches
Last month, five of the local churches held an ecumenical worship service at Waterfront Park in Dobbs Ferry, part of which was to raise funds for the pantry and for South Church’s Asylum Seekers Partnership.
Dobbs Ferry Lutheran Church, South Presbyterian, Aldersgate United Methodist, Ardsley United Methodist, and the First Unitarian Society of Westchester donated $275 from their service collection to both the pantry and to the Asylum Seekers Partnership. Three additional donations, specifically earmarked for the pantry, totaled $80.
It takes a village to provide food for our neighbors, and together we’re doing what needs to be done.
Duke Coffey wrote this month’s newsletter and has been a pantry volunteer since 2019.
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 