On Saturday, September 12th, Meals For Neighbors kicked off its guidance of 22 Fairfax and Loudoun County faculties for the 2020-2021 faculty yr by amassing a record-breaking 12,300 pounds of foods throughout its Purple Bag Program event. In contrast to prior a long time, even so, this celebration seemed very different for the reason that, in response to the pandemic, number of if any outside corporations may perhaps use general public educational institutions at this time. Thankfully, wherever not able to accessibility standard university selection web sites, Meals For Neighbors founded beneficial partnerships with region church buildings, such as Westwood Baptist Church in Springfield, Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon, and Riverside Presbyterian Church in Sterling.
“I’m so grateful for the partnership of these church buildings, whose enable has been critical to fulfilling our mission considering that this earlier March,” shared Food stuff For Neighbors founder Karen Joseph. ” When requested, they did not hesitate to aid. They serve as websites for our Crimson Bag Software foods selection and sorting gatherings as effectively as amenities for storing food and packing foodstuff. Their volunteers even support with distributing the food to college students in need.”
The hub of the new Sterling website, Riverside Presbyterian allows weekly foods pack distribution for Sterling Middle College, Park See High College, River Bend Center School, and Potomac Falls Superior Faculty college students. Trinity Presbyterian will help to serve Herndon Middle University plus Herndon and Mountain Perspective substantial university pupils as very well as the Langston Hughes Middle University and South Lakes Superior College meals pantry. Westwood Baptist would make supplying weekend food stuff to Irving Middle University possible, and this foods also reaches learners at Important and Twain center colleges as perfectly as West Springfield, Lewis, and Edison higher educational institutions. The beforehand set up meals collection and sorting website at Jackson Middle College serves Jackson and Falls Church Substantial College, and the Whitman Middle College web site serves Whitman and Sandburg middle educational facilities in addition Bryant, Quander Highway, West Potomac, and Mount Vernon superior schools.
Kathy Freeman and her partner, Marty Freeman, are the liaison concerning Foodstuff For Neighbors and Westwood Baptist Church, where Rev. Bryan Brock serves as Pastor. From April by July, the Freemans mobilized roughly 50 volunteers to pack baggage of weekend meals for learners in want. By the conclude of July, they had packed 10,000 baggage, practically all of which they’ve already dispersed to pupils in need to have.
Kathy, Marty, and the other Westwood Baptist volunteers truly feel blessed to have the chance to husband or wife with Food items For Neighbors. As Kathy spelled out, “Component of our church’s mission statement is to be the fingers and feet of Christ in the neighborhood. We just felt led to do this, as it is an outreach prospect basically future door to our church. We knew this was likely to be a good reward to the group. It was also a good profit to us. Serving in this way really opened our church’s eyes to how lucky we are and to how much support we can give to others.”
Karen and Mark Joseph launched Food items For Neighbors to deal with teenager hunger at universities where by a lot of college students had handful of reliable food sources other than their weekday faculty breakfasts and lunches. While many courses experienced recently started to tackle this concern at the elementary university degree, they have been also limited to deal with the substantial middle and large college populations. In 2016, Food For Neighbors began filling this gap via its Red Bag System, which lets individuals to shop for nonperishable merchandise at their benefit and to established them on their doorsteps for collection close to 5 periods per yr. Volunteers structured by neighborhoods then gather the food stuff and convey it to a person of 5 central spots, wherever it is sorted and then supplied to around 1,200 college students from 22 taking part middle and substantial universities in Northern Virginia.
Given that Nov 2016, Food stuff For Neighbors has gathered about 124,600 pounds of meals. The nonprofit now has over 1,200 homes donating red luggage crammed with shelf-steady foodstuff additionally extra than 650 motorists and volunteers variously collaborating in the foods assortment and sorting situations, like the a single on September 12th. Thanks to these and other generous neighborhood members, Food stuff For Neighbors also buys further foods when materials operate very low in involving Purple Bag System activities, and it offers grocery gift cards for learners suffering from the gravest food stuff insecurity.
Meals For Neighbors welcomes donations of foodstuff, volunteer expert services and guidance, and economical contributions to proceed its vital mission of ending child starvation by boosting awareness and group involvement. There are numerous techniques for businesses, assistance organizations, foundations, and men and women to develop into concerned. For people who are not able to store or who are presently outside of the current but growing company area, there is even an possibility to donate by way of a Digital Pink Bag System. Far more details is obtainable on the web.
