Our Special Angels - Our Volunteers
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Without our volunteers, The Lord's Pantry would not be possible. How can we choose ONE volunteer?? Each person is so important to us that we decided to speak up for the WHOLE organization - we are a team and without all of our parts, we could not make The Lord's Pantry work.
Where do we start...Without our wonderful drivers, there would be no meal delivery. All of them come after work to pick up cold bags containing breakfast and lunch, and the hot bags with dinner for that night. For example, we make eighteen stops in Mount Vernon. This is accomplished by what we call a "drop." One volunteer from Saint Mary's Church in Mount Vernon, picks up the food each night and delivers it to the church. From there, several volunteers deliver the meals to clients in Mount Vernon. The Mount Vernon volunteers have their own coordinator. If someone is unable to deliver on a particular night, they have their own backups. A group from Mount Kisco does the same thing for us, picking up and delivering to Mount Kisco and Ossining. Of course, New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, Port Chester, Harrison, Hartsdale, White Plains, Greenburgh, and Elmsford also need drivers every night, Monday through Friday, and we have them...thanks to our dedicated volunteers. It is dark, and often the weather is bad, but they are like the Postman - only better - they deliver!
On the other hand, there would not be anything to deliver if our kitchen volunteers weren't so cheerfully efficient. They cannot get into the kitchen until 3 o'clock p.m., and to get 100 dinners and their cold bags ready to go out at 5 o'clock is a first-class miracle. They label and fill the cold bags, make and package the salad, dessert, soup (if we have it), rolls, and whatever else goes into the cold bag that day. Last, but not least, they help dish out the hot dinners, cover and wrap them and put them into the thermal bags, leaving them ready for delivery by our drivers. It is a real assembly- line procedure. Our kitchen crew has it down to a science, and what's more, they actually seem to have fun doing it! They range in age from seniors to eight graders learning about Community Service, from corporate workers to carpenters. We have some high school seniors and college students; working together, they are just one big happy family.
We have to mention the volunteer (a young corporate executive) who delivers ten trays of yogurt every week, and has for two years...or the grocery store owner who drops all of his left-over rolls and bread on our doorstep - even on Sundays - to be frozen until we need them...and our good friend who comes in on her day off to work on the computer and give us lessons on our new programs.
Last, but by no means least, a young man who has taken us under his wing and helps us with our mass mailings and funding lists. He gives us whatever time he can spare, and more. We could go on and on - the list is endless. We have Christmas presents donated by corporate workers and school children...personal cards, hand done, by third graders. We were able to send a Christmas wreath to every client, thanks to a corporation's generosity. There is really no end to what our volunteers do for us. There would be no Lord's Pantry without them.
Our volunteers stand for:
who believe in our mission to see that no one that comes to us with HIV/AIDS goes hungry.
Our volunteers are our family. We love and honor them.
(This letter on Volunteers earned The Lord's Pantry a $5,000 award from the Diversified Investment Advisors.)
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