As some of you know, Bishop Maginn is closing tomorrow, officially for one week; I suspect it will be a good deal longer.
I wrote about this on Saturday. We have set up an emergency food program to make sure the furloughed refugee students have nourishing food to eat, along with their families.
These are kids who often skip some meals and who have no place to go during the day that is safe and supervised. Few have access t the technology most Americans take fr granted.
These are some of the most vulnerable families in America.
We are asking people to donate Price Chopper Supermarket Gift Certificates and send them to me at the farm so I can get them quickly to the staff and teachers for distribution to the neediest families. (The school may not be receiving mail.)
Price Chopper is the food chain nearest most of these families.
Since Bishop Maginn is closed and may not be receiving mail for a while, the school asked if it is okay for people to send the gift cards directly to me so that I can get them to the school.
It’s okay with me: Jon Katz, 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
Please make sure to fill in all of the fields on the gift card check out forms on the checkout page.
The cards are sold in four amounts: $25, $50, $75 and $100. There is a box for larger quantities in any amount.
If people can’t work the card purchase or don’t like to shop online, they can send a check to me, Jon Katz, Refugee Food Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
The gift cards cannot be sent to a P.O. Box, they have to come to a street address, in this case, mine: 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
Checks and gift cards can be sent to my home. People can also donate via Paypal, [email protected].
If for some reason, the school opens earlier, we can still use these cards to help buy groceries for these families. As refugees, they lost everything, and almost all of the federal subsidies given to new families have been eliminated.
Over the week, we will also ask for help in providing these children with the technology and safe spaces required to continue their education.
Few of these children have computers or Wi-Fi in their homes; most of their parents work for companies like Wal-Mart or grocery chains.
There are most often no parents home all day. The school is preparing for virtual classrooms. But some of the students may not have the Wi-Fi or equipment to use. We’re thinking about Wi-Fi boosters or even the most inexpensive Ipads.
This weekend, the staff is working to make care packages out of the nutritious lunches and breakfasts we send them from an Amazon Wish List last week, just in the nick of time.
But we need a more robust way of making sure the students and their families have access to the groceries they need for their families as well.
The gift card program is the fastest and most straightforward way to do this; it looks like we will be talking about several weeks without school, perhaps longer. That is a brutal hardship for these families, along with so many others. Some parents are already facing layoffs.
There are no safety nets beneath them.
The school is working with state, local, and federal health to make sure the students and their families and neighbors are safe in these new virtual environments.
While I can’t visit the school, I see that I can help them just as much, using my blog and my computer. This is critical; the refugee students will rarely, if ever, need more help than now.
According t my e-mail, some people are buying these gift cards, and thanks.
Please help if you can. You can purchase a gift card here.