AARP Oyster Bay Team Volunteers: Food Drive To Help End Hunger on the Island

The AARP Oyster Bay volunteer team held a food drive earlier this year to benefit St. Kilian Parish Social Ministry.  The St. Kilian food pantry provides food and basic needs to hundreds of people each month.   We thank the pantry for allowing us to stock the pantry on a Saturday when they are usually closed.  This enabled us to collect the donations on a busier shopping day and for more hours.  “Wow, wow, wow!” said Nina Petersen, St. Kilian Outreach Director, after seeing all the donations we collected.

We thank the managers of the Farmingdale Stop and Shop for letting us hold the food drive at their location, and for permitting us to collect the donations indoors during a cold month when food drives are not usually done.

Our AARP volunteers were amazing.  Eleven of them collected and weighed the bags of donations. They loaded their cars with the donations, and then filled the shelves at the food pantry. Many of them even offered to stay longer than their scheduled shift.

The generosity of the Stop and Shop customers was extraordinary.  We collected over 800 pounds of donations in just one day!  Some of the customers didn’t know there was a food drive so they asked us to watch their carts as they went back inside to buy donations.  Other customers gave us more food than they bought for themselves.

This food drive helped all of us to become a part of the anti-hunger initiative on Long Island.

Written by Ricki Rosenberg, an AARP Oyster Bay volunteer from Farmingdale, NY