PA Central FCU held it’s 2nd Annual Shredding Hunger Shred Day Event on October 21st at the Palmyra Branch. Shredding Hunger was part of CU Kind Day — a movement to spread kindness and caring in our local community.
Over 5,000 pounds of paper were safely destroyed at our Shred Day event and we collected about $400 in monetary donations to support The Caring Cupboard in Palmyra. PA Central made a donation to bring our total gift to $1,315!
Take a moment to read the note from Shila Ulrich, Executive Director of The Caring Cupboard in Palmyra about the growing needs in our community.
October 24, 2023: www.TheCaringCupboard.com
Just doing a little check in after we were pulling some numbers at the office to see where we are year over year at The Caring Cupboard.
We’re seeing a huge increase in the number of families who need our support.
We’ve been feeling a bit of a trend upward in the number of friends and neighbors we are seeing each week. We hovered around 150 a week for a long time, and at Jonestown Outreach Pantry (JOY) we were seeing 50ish families. So combined, right in the 200 families a week mark. Now, we are approaching 400 families a week. You might think that people are coming with more regularity, but that just isn’t true. In fact, from July 1 – October 24, 2022, families used our services an average of 6.72 times. In the same time frame in 2023, that number dropped to 6.27 times.
But here’s where the story gets gloomy:
We talk about duplicated (repeat users) and unduplicated (non-repeated users) visits related to people (individuals) and households (people living under one roof). In the same time frame (July-October), here’s the breakdown:
Unduplicated individuals:
7-10/2022: 1,366
7-10/2023: 2,349 (52.92% change)
Unduplicated households:
7-10/2022: 455
7-10/2023: 741 (47.83% change)
Duplicated individuals:
7-10/2022: 9,507
7-10/2023: 15,331 (46.9% change)
Duplicated households:
7-10/2022: 3,056
7-10/2023: 4,648 (41.33% change)
So what do we do? Short answer: I don’t know. We jump in, head first, everyday to make sure there is food on the shelves and people are being served with dignity and respect. The rest, as I always say, is gravy.
But! We can engage in all kinds of ways:
- Participate in the upcoming Boy Scout Food Drive on Saturday, November 11. This is a small drop in the bigger bucket kind of thing. Even if you give 4 cans of corn, you’ll add to what has traditionally been the biggest food drive of the year.
- Volunteer with us. You can volunteer at JOY (Jonestown) or The Caring Cupboard (Palmyra) – we’d love to have you with us and I promise you’ll get more out of it than you’d ever expect. We live a lot of life here and its encouraging to see so many people come together in really beautiful ways.
- Contact me for a tour. I’d be happy to show you around and talk about the life-changing work we do in our 4 walls. Again, lots of life happens here and we’re always eager to talk about it!
- Come out to Arbor Greene’s Turkey and Holiday Food Drive on November 4th [neighborhood in Palmyra PA]. The folks at Arbor Greene have been incredible support for us over many years and their turkeys are squarely the reason we can support more than 400 local families with all the holiday trimmings for Thanksgiving and a large part of Christmas.
(Note: we have a LOT of really incredible people, churches, orgs, and more who support us – this is just one suggested idea of many, many, many groups rallying around us!)
Tell a friend about what we’re doing. We can engage in this work because of an incredibly supportive community who rallies around the idea that no one in our community should be hungry.
Reach out to me <Shila Ulrich> at The Caring Cupboard with any questions you might have.
November 16, 2023 – A message from The Caring Cupboard
A call to action in 2 parts:
1. We’d love to supply a stick of butter for our friends and neighbor’s Thanksgiving meal boxes…want to help us to get to our goal of 400 sticks?
Contact The Caring Cupboard.
2. Three families called just this morning to ask about how to begin receiving helping through The Caring Cupboard because they had no food left in their home. Want to make a difference for your friends and neighbors who are facing food insecurity? Drop off a donation at The Caring Cupboard 131 North Railroad Street, Palmyra, PA
Here’s a list of things we’d love to have:
Canned pasta (a lifeline for living in hotels without a stove)
Cooking oil
Plastic jar/canned pasta sauce
Cream of Mushroom soup
Canned tuna or chicken
kidney beans
canned fruit
meal soups like Progresso
>>>>> Thank you! <<<<<<
