Help From Our Friends

Many Thanks To Our Generous Neighbors; Here’s What We Need To Keep The Pantry Stocked

By Sierra Fleenor

Executive Director, GPHC, Inc.

It’s hard to believe spring is just around the corner. We’re already starting to plan our Garden in a Box program and other outdoor activities for the spring, summer, and fall. We can’t wait to share with you all we’ll do in 2018. Until then, we’d like to express our gratitude for our supporters.

Thank you to our volunteers who continue to be here week after week, sorting donations, assisting clients, and helping us get the food pantry organized. We finally got caught up on sorting our donations, so our volunteers have been tackling various organizational items, from building a new rolling rack for our travel size toiletries to reorganizing our miscellaneous shelves to folding and stocking paper bags for our clients to use. There are a million tiny aspects of this work and we could not be as organized, helpful, and efficient as we are without each of our volunteers.

Thank you to the students from McAuliffe who have volunteered with the Weekend Food Program. Additionally, we’d like to thank our regular volunteers with this program. Without all of you, we could not assemble over 270 bags each week and distribute them to our four sites.

Do you want to help?

A huge thank you also goes to our newspaper bundling volunteers and our blockworkers. So many of us have the paper delivered to our door and that is only possible because of the volunteerism of your neighbors. If you’d like to help distribute the newspaper, a commitment of as little as 20 minutes per month, email newspaper@greaterparkhill.org.

We do still need volunteers for the Weekend Food Program, as well as the Garden Walk that happens in June, and the Home Tour and Street Fair, which takes place in September. Much planning goes into making these events happen. If you have extra time or organizational skills, contact us at info@greaterparkhill.org or 303-388-0918 to learn more.

Thank you to all our donors who have kept the food pantry and weekend food program well stocked. We are able to serve an average of 50 households a month through our pantry and over 270 students through our weekend food program due to your support. A special thanks goes to those who have made financial donations to support these programs. Your dollars help us purchase specific food that we need as well as all the other items that go into these programs, including bags, storage tubs, and so on.

Thanks go to Amy Barrett and Rebecca Rogers and Tables Restaurant for hosting a fundraiser for us in February. The event was well attended and 10 percent all food sales were donated to GPHC to help fund our food programs.

Membership is one of our largest fundraising efforts. Those who renew their membership throughout the year keep us going strong. We are grateful to those who have renewed or started their membership in 2018, including our new business members.

Stocking the pantry

For those interested in donating to our food programs, we have some specific requests. For our food pantry we need hygiene products, including men’s deodorant, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, baby wipes, and razors. We distribute both regular size and travel size hygiene items.

We also need hand warmers, toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent (in smaller containers, if possible), and dish soap.

For food, we need canned peaches, mixed fruit, applesauce, etc. and canned meats especially tuna, salmon, chunk chicken, Vienna sausages, and spam. We could also use mac ‘n’ cheese, corn and black eyed peas.

Our clients rarely have access to meat and dairy through our pantry, so donations of fresh or frozen meat and dairy are always appreciated. We can distribute any fresh and frozen items, so keep that in mind. Many of our clients have pets, so we continue to need dry dog food and wet and dry cat food.

For the weekend food program, we need individually wrapped cereal bars, individual servings of instant oatmeal, individual cereal bowls and regular size boxes of kid friendly cereals. We are also on the lookout for metal shelving, so let us know if you’re cleaning out your garage and have some.

Donations can be made during business hours at GPHC’s office, at 2823 Fairfax St. Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. We also accept donations of non-perishable items at the Park Hill Branch Library and Cake Crumbs during their regular business hours. We cannot distribute expired items, so please check dates before making a donation.

If you have any questions about our work or how to get involved with GPHC as a volunteer, donor, or member, you can check out our website at: greaterparkhill.org, give us a call at 303-388-0918, or stop by our office during business hours.