17 April

Day Four, Food For Children, The Cambridge Food Pantry Is Asking For Life Breakfast Cereal, Cinnamon, 3 Pack, $8.19

by Jon Katz

Day Four of the week-long campaign is to get healthy breakfast food to the 188 children and 66 families who depend on the pantry for nourishing food: Life Breakfast Cereal, Cinnamon, 13 oz boxes, 3 Pack: $8.19.

This campaign has one more day to go, and thanks for your generous support. I took some photographs yesterday so donors can see what happens when the food arrives. Lots of work for the volunteers.

So far, we’ve purchased Welch’s fruit snacks, instant Oatmeal, Cinnamon Life, and Chicken Noodle soup. After today, the remaining item on the Wish List for this week is Maruchen Chicken Ramen. You can see the Amazon Food Pantry Wish List, updated daily, here.

This will profoundly impact these families’ lives this week, giving the children and their families healthy breakfasts through the weekend.

Yesterday, I went to the pantry to see the volunteers unloading the truck from the allotment from the Regional Food Bank Of Northeast New York.

 

The volunteers work quietly and steadily almost every day of the week to get, unload, sort, stack, and place the food from the pantry, supermarkets, and local farmers. Tomorrow, Thursday, Maria, I, and a dozen other volunteers will go to the pantry to stuff food backpacks (plastic bags) for the 66 families and their 188 children.

Maria and I volunteered to work that morning. She also wanted to help unload the food boxes when they came in. Thanks for your donations to fill them with healthy foods and supplies for lunch, breakfast, the weekend, and beyond.

It’s difficult and continuous work. Your food donations are making a huge difference.

 

I’m touched by the hard work and dedication of the volunteers; this world is a lot more complicated than I knew or realized. Because of these people, hundreds of others with financial troubles and their children can eat good food. It’s a wonderful cause, and I’m glad I was asked to help. The Army of Good, as always, is coming through.

 

Above, the cold storage room and milk and other perishable goods go.

Thanks again for your help. The families and children thank you also. Again, today’s children’s food request is Maruchen Chicken Ramen; you can see it and purchase it here.

7 Comments

  1. I wrote last week and asked why they call the plastic bags backpacks and you didn’t answer. I’m going to call the pantry tomorrow and ask. It’s a very weird thing to dio!

    1. Janice, I checked my search engine, and there is no record of anyone by your name posting any messages last week. Perhaps you wrote with a different name. My policy is that I answer only some of the messages, just those I want to answer, think are worth answering, and have time to answer. Someone other than me should answer your question. I don’t speak for the Food Pantry or its decisions. As one who helps stuff the bags, I think they are lovely and obvious. I’m sorry you are calling them weird. I’m proud to work on them. The number of the pantry is 518 677 7152.

      We will all be helping to fill these bags tomorrow, and I hope you will consider exploring their weirdness by donating some food to children who need it. Thanks.

    2. Janice, in the school district I used to work in, they were called backpacks because they would go into the students’ backpacks.

      1. I gather the reason is that they didn’t want to label them food pantry gifts. I see nothing weird about them in any way neither do the people receiving them. Some of the kids families can’t afford back packs big enough to hold multiple cans of soup and cereal and with books and seaters and home work , and getting dozens of back packs to the pantry and school and back again would be a nightmare. The bags are big and heavy and bulky.

  2. I think you could call them sidewinder heffalump bags and it would be a wonderfully weird name for an amazingly wonderful thing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Email SignupFree Email Signup