Stroudwater Food Pantry Status – 4/30/17

Hi Team – This past Sunday your Stroudwater Food Pantry served 35 families, with a total of 91 people receiving groceries.  4 new families joined us this week.

Surprisingly, our SHAW’S and Hannaford food pickups was one of the smallest so far this year, yielding only 1,349 lbs.  As you know our typical pickups range from 1,650 to 2,000 lbs.   Fortunately our freezer capacity allows us to plan for shortages and carry food in reserve. This week’s volunteers included, Karlene, Michael C, Autumn W, Mei C, Lois, Adam, Sheamus, Terry, Jean, Judy and myself.

After a thorough pilot of our Roadside Assistance Program (RAP) last year, we are now pushing the program ahead aggressively through at least the end of summer.  This week we made up 34 RAP bags of emergency food rations to be handed out to people standing in the middle of the street asking for donations.  The bags include peanut butter, a pop-top can of soup, crackers, 1 oatmeal packet, a granola bar, plastic utensils, napkin, and a pink information tag with our pantry name, address, and hours of operation.   The bags have a high retail cost and so are one-per-customer, so we are actively pursuing low cost purchases and donations in support of this area of ministry expansion.  Our biggest need for the Roadside Assistance Program is for metal cans of soup with pop-tops (no need for a can opener).

A big thank you to Preble Street Pantry & Soup Kitchen for dropping off 3 cases of granola bars this week, they will all go right into RAP bags.  And a special thanks to Dee and Bill Barrows for allowing us to store 80 lbs of frozen meat in their freezer.  That will be coming in handy now that we have some freezer space available in the pantry!                         — Doug