Volunteer

Want to help our neighbors in need? Our volunteers do whatever it takes to help our clients get healthy food, and we have fun along the way. We pick up donations from a food bank and local stores, pack boxes of packaged food, load bags with produce, and more. We welcome our clients every Wednesday morning and fill their carts. Volunteers raise money, write blogs, write grants, and spread the word so that our neighbors know that we are here to help them.

Since the pandemic began the pantry is held outside the South Presbyterian Church. You can work as little or as much as you want—we’d love to hear from you so shoot us an email at dobbsferrypantry@gmail.com.

31 thoughts on “Volunteer

  1. Hi,
    My name is Leonor and I would like to volunteer at the pantry. I’m fluent in Spanish then I’m looking for a place where this plus can be useful.I’m 60 + and leave in Hastings.
    My second choice is The children Village where I worked last year as a Spanish Teacher at the nursery school. I will be in touch with them too.
    Please tell me your schedule and more importantly how I can help.
    Thanks in advance!
    Leonor Krawczyk
    914 629-6798

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    1. Thank you, Leonor. We have a wonderful team of volunteers who work here at the pantry every Wednesday, but may I make a note of your name in case one of our volunteers is not available one day? We’re open every Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. until noon and on the last Friday of the month also from 5:30 p.m. until 7:00.

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    1. Sa’ar, thank you for offering to help the Food Pantry. May I hold onto your e-mail? We may need you to deliver food to people in the community who can’t come out.

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  2. Hi Molly: I hope this is the right way to contact you on the website. I could not find any email contact info. I want to let you know I would be happy to help deliver food during the COVID crisis. Yours,
    Murphy

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    1. Murphy, thank you so much and so good to hear from you. Hope you’re all well and safe at home. If we end up making many deliveries as the pantry rolls along from week to week, I’ll give you a call or text or something. Thank you!

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  3. Ok that sounds great. Whatever I can do to help. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello to Michele when I stopped by on Wed with a large food donation and some homemade masks. Maybe next time. We are all in this together.

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  4. Hi, I see you are requesting diapers as a donation. Is there also a food pantry need for baby food?

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  5. Thank you, April. When the pantry is operating normally we are delighted to receive baby food. Our method is usually “client choice”, where clients browse through all the food we have and choose what they want. We’re waiting for that to happen now. The way we operate now is to give a Stop & Shop gift card and a general bag of basic shelf-stable food, plus some produce if somebody has dropped anything off. This speeds things up so clients don’t have to congregate on Wednesdays. They can take their gift card and food and go. Which is the long way of asking you to keep that baby food on your shelf for now until the church finally opens again. We’re generally asking for monetary donations now because the gift cards cost a lot of money.

    By the way, in another comment you were suggesting that we have a food drop-off point at Stop & Shop. There actually is a bin at Stop & Shop with a sign on it. If you haven’t seen it maybe it’s been shoved under something. One of our volunteers routinely collects food from the various bins we have (Stop & Shop, the Dobbs Ferry library, Irvington library, Greenburgh Town Hall). I’ll ask her to check and see what happened to the Stop & Shop bin.

    Thank you for caring about us, April.

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  6. Hello,
    I am a member of a group of teachers that would like to make a monetary donation. What is the preferred method for making that donation?

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    1. Diana, thank you so much for wanting to help the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry. We’re serving three times the number of people we usually see, so your offer of a monetary donation comes at an important time. You can use our PayPal feature on our website at http://www.dobbsferrypantry.org, or we would be happy with a check made out to Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry and mailed to South Presbyterian Church, 343 Broadway, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522. Either way, we will use your donation immediately to provide food for families who are coming to us either because they’ve always been with us or because they’ve lost their jobs and need a food pantry for the first time in their lives. Thank you so much for helping us!

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      1. Good morning,
        I completed a credit card donation this morning. It will appear in my name: Diana Evangelista. However the money was collected from the Ardsley Congress of Teachers.
        Thank you for your good work in the community. We would be happy to partner again the the future.
        Diana Evangelista

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      2. Diana, we received the donation from PayPal this morning. Thank you so much, and thank you to all the members of the Ardsley Congress of Teachers. The Pantry is continuing to serve many, many people, and this donation will enable us to do so into the future. Please give all the members a virtual hug from the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry!

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  7. I would love to do a food drive, whenever you would like, both in my townhouse community and in the nursery school where I work. Either or both can be on-going or at specific times. Please let me know what works for you

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    1. Margaret thank you so much for thinking of the Pantry. We would love for you to do food drives at either your community or your nursery school, or both. A couple of people have done food drives on their blocks or in their communities and they have been very successful. I could send you by email a list of our most-popular foods if you like. Food drives like the ones you propose would be especially helpful from now through the holidays, especially now that the Pantry is serving so many more hungry families. Let me know when you’d be able to do this and we’ll work together!

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  8. Hi – If possible, can I please get on your volunteer list – I believe you are full, but I can be a backup when needed (or a regular volunteer if you need one). Thank you for all that you do. Christine

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    1. Thank you, Christine. We do have a great team of volunteers, but we do keep a list of people who might be available in case someone can’t make it. I’ll add your name and email address to the list.

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  9. Ready ate pick up food items and help out with pantry if needed. I am a senior but I am sure there are tasks which I can handle

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    1. Thank you, Christina. We could use a fresh supply of hearty soups and dried black beans. If you can drop off some of those we would be grateful. Thank you so much for thinking of us!

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  10. I would like to volunteer to do some drop offs. If you need an additional driver. Also I am planning on dropping off some goods so if you have anything specific you would like me to get let me know.

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    1. Nili, thank you so much for reaching out to the Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry. In order to make deliveries for the pantry it’s necessary to be available on Wednesdays around 11:00 a.m. or so, have an SUV and be physically fit enough to carry a heavy box of shelf-stable foods up a flight of stairs. Would you fit that description?

      You also offered to drop off some food for us. If you would send me an email at dobbsferrypantry@gmail.com I’ll email you back a list of the foods we most often give out. We also always need diapers, particularly sizes 2, 3, 4 and 6, plus baby wipes.

      Thank you for thinking of us, Nili. I’ll wait to hear from you.

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  11. Hello, I have a teenager who is available most Friday evenings for help at the pantry if needed and I’d be happy to accompany him!

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  12. Hello! My name is Lindsay and I live in Hastings. I would love to volunteer to help on wednesdays, to provide delivery or to help with any administrative or business tasks the pantry needs. Please let me know if and what kind of help is needed!

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  13. Hello! We are looking to leave a monetary donation, we raised money as a business doing a community raffle and we raised a good amount of cash…do you guys take cash donations?

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    1. Hi Mary,
      That’s wonderful, thank you! If you could please come by on a Wednesday anytime between 9-1 to drop off the cash, that would be great. You can give it to Gretchen, Vera or Benny. South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry.
      Thanks for thinking of us!
      Gretchen

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