“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”

- Coretta Scott King

Hi, everyone. I hope your summer is going well and you are enjoying some of these rainless days! As I drove Colin to camp today, we talked about the need to be with other people. The ability to connect around shared interests, work together to accomplish tasks and just enjoy being with others.

I mentioned how last week before our delivery, I was feeling a bit off. But as our delivery crew arrived, greeted one another and jumped in to prep, I found myself feeling better. The community of the work, pleasantness of the volunteers and the selfless giving of time turned my emotions around. Hence the quote above to introduce this message.

Today, I would like to share details on the volume of food we purchase, collect and provide each month to our client families. We have multiple sources including:

• NE Regional Food Bank, 68%

• Countryside Farms and Bimbo Bakery, 10%

• Rockland Community Against Hunger Food Recovery, 9%

• Community donations, 8%

• Rockland Community Against Hunger Get Fresh, 5%

Our volunteers are essential in ensuring we collect, sort and distribute all of this food which in 2023 has averaged 38,227 pounds each month!

• We order an average of 13,000 pounds of food twice a month from the Food Bank and engage Clancy Moving and Relocation to pick it up and deliver it to Suffern. Clancy kindly donates 1 of the 2 delivery costs to us each month.

• We purchase our milk and eggs from a local, family owned distributor, Countryside Farms.

• Bimbo Bakery frequently donates bread to us which is picked up by another group of volunteers, organized by Anne, who drive to Nanuet to select, load and transport the bread.

• Rockland Community Against Hunger, RCAH, recovers all types of food each week from local stores. Our team, led by Terry, selects, sorts and repacks an average of more than 3,000 pounds each month for our clients (more details below).

• Community donations are accepted each Wednesday during hours of operation. Many local residents and community groups donate fresh produce and a variety of unexpired foods for our clients.

Fundraising

While we don’t have any active fundraisers going on now, you are always welcome to share information from this newsletter or our social media pages with your friends, family and network to promote and support our efforts.

We would also welcome any ideas you have or business contacts who may be willing to host a dine-to-donate or sponsor us in some way.

Volunteers go above & beyond

In addition to purchasing 13,000 pounds of food twice a month, we have supplementary food collections as part of a collaboration with Rockland Community Against Hunger (RCAH). This food helps to fill our shelves with more perishable choices as well as extra nonperishable items.

-      Three times a month, volunteer Dan Richter, drives to Boulders Stadium and picks up 700-800 pounds of food. This food is brought down by the NE Regional Food Bank and distributed to participating food pantries through the RCAH GET FRESH program.

-      Every Tuesday, Terry Deasy, Pantry Coordinator, selects, sorts and shelves recovered food through the RCAH FOOD RECOVERY program. Lisa, Rita and Linda kindly donate their time, muscle and help to support this delivery alongside Terry. Drivers for RCAH (Larry shown here), travel daily to supermarkets, farms and other sources to recover food and distribute it to local pantries. This donation adds more produce, meat and cold items to our distribution. In July, we collected 4,128 pounds of food through this program!

We are so appreciative of the extra work these great volunteers do to help collect this food!

Volunteer opportunities

Please click here to view our sign-ups for August. We will be open six times with two delivery dates during the month. We will be closed on August 30th. Thank you in advance for giving your time.

Did you know? In July, our volunteers gave more than 435 hours of their time!

Wishing you all a wonderful August!

Respectfully yours,

Joyce

SFP Director

201.394.0627