Stroudwater Food Pantry Status – 9/28/19

Hi Team – This was a very busy week that concluded a very busy month for your Stroudwater Food Pantry. Our Sunday crew served 46 families this week, providing groceries to a total of 138 people; plus they signed up 7 new families in the process!  Volunteers for this week included Angie, Anna, Anne, Cat, Debbie, Jean, Karlene, Misty and Beth, Nick, Phil, Rena, Steve and myself.

Some of the things that happened just this week included:

• On Monday the order of our new steel Food Pantry Shed was confirmed and is scheduled for delivery and construction early to mid-November.
• On Wednesday Angie and I took a ride to Orchard Ridge Farm in Gorham to pick up their donation of 105 dozen eggs.  Stephen and Amy Bibula are wonderful people, raising chickens, farming apple and pear orchards, running a country store, and making some of the best pizza around!
• On Thursday our TEFAP (The Emergency Family Assistance Program) food pickup through the U.S. Department of Agriculture totaled 2,300 lbs.  2,300 lbs. is a lot of food to process, however, Stantec, an international corporation with an office in Scarborough, sent 14 volunteers over to the pantry to unload, organize, and put away all of it.  This volunteering initiative, Stantec In The Community (SITC), was part of Stantec’s worldwide week of community service across the company. They were a great team!  They even rearranged our storage room and sorted our donated eggs into cartons!
• On Friday our food processing crew made short work of our two supermarket pickups, and readied the pantry for Sunday families.

We concluded September with 5 ½ tons of food processed, and serving an average of 50 families per week for the last four weeks.  Thank you everyone who volunteered this month, a special thank you to the energetic volunteers at Stantec, and a special thank you to Orchard Ridge Farms who donated almost 200 dozen eggs in September! — Doug

To learn more about your Stroudwater Food Pantry, follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stroudwaterfoodpantry/