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Belchertown CAN! Food Drive Hits Target
Tuesday,
January 26, 2010
The food drive that culminated with the “Community Give-In” on Saturday, January 23, met its goal of raising four tons of food to benefit five local food pantries. The effort, sponsored by Belchertown CAN! (Community Aid Network), a non-partisan, community service organization, hit its target through the tremendous generosity of the Belchertown community, including many of the town’s businesses, and with the essential help of volunteers in Ware.
“Despite the economy people were super generous,” said CAN! Member Susan Knapp. She also said that this year’s food drive was more successful that last year’s. Gail Gramarossa added that more businesses were willing to host donation bins.
In all, the drive brought in an estimated 8400 pounds of food and over $1500 in cash donations to be distributed among the three Belchertown pantries (at the United Church of Christ, St. Francis Roman Catholic Church, and Dwight Chapel), the Amherst Survival Center, and the Jubilee Cupboard in Ware. The five pantries were on hand at Belchertown Town Hall the end of the day to cart away their portions. The money will be distributed after a careful accounting is made.
The effort enjoyed the support of Stop & Shop Supermarket and Checkers Market in Belchertown and Big Y Supermarket in Ware. Students and teachers in all of the Belchertown Schools participated.
Belchertown High School even held an inter-class competition to bring in the most donations. Christina Aponte said that the high school collected 1,136 items, but the Class of 2010 won the competition. “The Class of 2010 is getting an ice-cream sundae party given by Mrs. Vigneux,” said Aponte. She also added that Custodian Bob Kennison was instrumental in the effort. “He went full-boat helping me,” she said. Kennison assisted Aponte with the counting, organizing, and loading of the collection bins at the high school.
BelchertownCAN! organizers pose for a group photo after all the food was collected and organized before loading up the trucks of five local food pantries on Saturday, January 23rd. PHOTO SUBMITTED BY JEFF ROCK and tweaked by Michael Seward (scroll down for a slide show of additional photos)
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