Stroudwater Pantry Status – 11/06/16

Hi Team – This week your Stroudwater Food Pantry had another busy Sunday, serving 48 families for a total of 153 people supplied with groceries.  8 new families joined us this week, taking us to a new total of 476 households registered to receive groceries on a regular basis.

Our Shaw’s food pickup and two Hannaford food pickups on Friday yielded a total of 1,667 lbs.; purchases and donations came to 342 lbs. for a total of 2,009 lbs. of food processed for the week.  Volunteers included Adam, Rob, Michael C, Judy, Steve, Karlene and myself.

This week we received an unexpected gift from our Hannaford Supermarket in Westbrook; they donated to us an entire pallet load of cardboard boxes filled with dry store/can food meals!  It was part of their $10 Give a Meal program, and the food is purchased and donated by Hannaford customers.  We received over 50 boxes!  We plan to use these over the Christmas holiday to augment our Christmas giving to the community whom we serve.  Thank you Hannaford!

What’s Next –

• This week has been a blessing of food donations!  Our church family alone donated over 100 of dry goods; primarily the peanut butter, pasta, spaghetti sauce and cereal that keeps our doors open.  Thank you church family!!
• This week our good friend Mike Curran stopped by with a generous donation of pasta and spaghetti sauce.  For those of us who know him, Mike has been one of our faithful outside benefactors, regularly supporting the Stroudwater Food Pantry since our earliest days. Thank you Mike!
• The Health Source Chiropractic Center on Brighton Ave. is currently conducting a food drive on our behalf, collecting can food and other dry stores for SFP through the end of November.  Thank you Health Source!
• My Space Yoga in Stroudwater is starting up a food drive on our behalf next week, continuing through mid- Dec.  Their focus will be can food and other dry stores for SFP.  Thank you MSY!
• As we approach our 2^nd Thanksgiving at SFP, we have again been selected by Cheverus High School to receive 30 Turkey dinner baskets to provide thanksgiving dinners to selected families.Our dinner give away is on Friday Nov 18^th, and we are seeking volunteers to assist us on that Friday to help with the distribution.  Please reply if you can help your Stroudwater Food Pantry give away Thanksgiving dinners!
• For the past week Scott McIlwain of Charter Communications (formally Time Warner Cable) has been shooting video and conducting interviews for a forthcoming community news spot about the Stroudwater Food Pantry.  SFP and the work we do will be featured in a 5 minute segment on the TWC-TV Your Magazine show (channel 9, but only if you have Time Warner Cable).  It could start running as early as next week, I will let you know the schedule for air time once I have it.  Additionally, they will be sending me a link to watch the show online; the online version will be available for everyone to watch.  When I get the link I will send it along, and post it to our blog site as well.

Thank you everyone who has made it their personal mission to, “Do the work of Jesus by feeding those in need, and reducing the number of food insecure within the Greater Portland Community.”  !!   – Doug