WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON!!!
Hello Twelve Baskets followers, donors, and volunteers!! Lots of great things have been going on here at the pantry. We are growing and are in need of more awesome volunteers. We serve around 100 families every week and we can only serve these families if we have volunteers like you! We are looking for a few parking lot attendants to help direct traffic in our busy parking lots and personal shoppers to help our clients shop and for volunteers that can lift up to 50 pounds and have a valid drivers license to join our team. If you’re interested in joining our volunteer team please come to the pantry any Tuesday between 9am and noon and speak to Heather or Nanner B about how we can help you join our team.
During thanksgiving time our very own Western Michigan Football team had a food drive for our clients. They were able to bless around 75 families with full thanksgiving meals including turkeys, stuffing, potatoes, green bean casserole ingredients, jiffy mix, a roasting pan for the turkey, and even dessert and a beverage all stuffed into a thirty-one gifts large utility tote!! They also provided these families with gift cards to help with costs for future meals. A bunch of the players and retired players from previous years came to the pantry and greeted each family in need with a tote and carried it to their car. This is the 2nd year that they have blessed our community with these meals.
During Christmas time a few volunteers gathered donations from the community and put together Christmas stockings for the children of Twelve Baskets clients. They were able to put together over 100 Christmas stockings this year full of toys and Christmas candy. Dollar Tree was an awesome sponsor of toys this year for this project. We were blessed with lots of Christmas cheer from our community.
We also had this sweet girl named Megan Cummins donate hand made scarves for our clients. It is so heart warming to see all the youth with big hearts that want to help. Thank you so much Megan for your hard work in making those beautiful scarves for our clients
While we are on the subject of how great our youth is, lets take a moment and introduce you to Kaiden. He had a project in school and decided that he would do a personal care drive for the families at Twelve Baskets Food Pantry. Thank you so much young man for your help in our mission to STOMP OUT HUNGER right here in our community.
Here is another awesome group of kids loving to give back to the hungry community. Tobey Elementary did a peanut butter and jelly drive for us. They collected hundreds of jars of peanut butter and jelly. These are big staples at Twelve Baskets Food Pantry. I mean really guys, who doesn’t like peanut butter and jelly?!?!
This stage of boxes is from another elementary school in our area. Lake Center Elementary School had a huge contest between classrooms throughout the school!!! We picked up over a hundred full boxes of food that day!! Way to go kids. We love to see schools and businesses making food drives a competition. This years competition was bigger than last years. Great job kids, staff, and parents of Lake Center Elementary School. If you would like to host a food drive at your business or school please email Heather at mazeheather@yahoo.comand she will get you started with all the info you need.
Meet this awesome crew from Nulty Insurance. These guys took their day off to go out into the community and help where they could. We were so blessed that they chose us as one of their locations. We have started a “free store” which is where our clients can come and pick out house hold items, clothing, and other fun things that you might need such as dishes, sheets, and blankets. This part of the building needed a good paint job, a furnace, and some reorganization. This group of insurance peeps came and painted the whole thing for us in a very short time and had fun doing it. They were a blast to work with. After they got the first coat of paint on they walked over to the food part of the pantry and helped us stock some shelves. Thank you so much guys for your help in painting our free store. It looks so good.
Speaking of renovations. We are needing to raise $500,000 to purchase and renovate this great space to the north of our building. We have purchased the empty lot to the north of the building to turn into a parking lot. We are needing a new roof, shelving units, stainless steel sinks and counters for a clean room to repackage food, paint, cement work, plumbing and electrical work. If you know of anyone who is certified in any of these fields and would like to donate their time to helping us renovate this building so we can better serve our community please send them our way.
Thank you for your continued support at Twelve Baskets Food Pantry. We invite you to join us the 1st and 3rd Friday from 4-7pm and the 2nd and 4th Saturday from 8:30am-noon every month for distribution to see how we work. It is so awesome the impact that we make in our community by providing hope, dignity and self-respect to our clients when they come and “shop” for their groceries. Check us out on Facebook and stay up to date on what’s happening here at Twelve Baskets Food Pantry. That’s all for now. Keep an eye on your email for future newsletters!!! God Bless!!
