Food drive donations set record

#Middlebury #MiddleburyFoodBank #FoodDrive

Volunteers from town departments unload donations collected during the Middlebury Food Bank food drive. The truck in the picture was the smallest of four trucks full of donations delivered to the food bank March 29. (Marjorie Needham photo)

By MARJORIE NEEDHAM

Middlebury Volunteer Fire Department (MVFD) Chief Brett Kales reported on Facebook Saturday, March 27, that the March 22 to 27 Middlebury Food Drive challenge among town departments was a resounding success. He said four trucks full of food would carry the donations to the Middlebury Food Bank the following Monday. Kales wasn’t talking about pickup trucks; the trucks were dump trucks from the Middlebury Department of Public Works (DPW).

Kales said during the Easter Parade through town Saturday, the final event of the food drive, folks along the parade route also donated $900. As for the competition among town departments, Kales wrote, “We have decided that there was no winner and called it a draw because the real winners here are the town’s food bank and all those that use it.” He thanked residents and Buzzuto’s, Napoli Foods, Dandy Foods, and Dinovas Four Corners for their donations and for coming out and supporting the town wide food drive.

Monday morning, vehicles of all sorts filled the upper parking lot at Shepardson Community Center – huge dump trucks, smaller DPW vehicles, Middlebury Police Department cruisers and others. They carried the food donations and the town employees and other volunteers who promptly set to work unloading the food and carrying it into Shepardson. Inside, more town employees and volunteers, including the Parks and Recreation staff, took on the task of sorting donations in two rooms across the hall from each other.

Usually donations are brought into one room. Social/Senior Services Director JoAnn Cappelletti said this was the first time ever that one room wasn’t large enough for all the donations. “This is a first,” she said, “And all the help,” she exclaimed, looking around at the volunteers busily sorting the donations.

MVFD member Bob Dawes was among those sorting donations. “This is the most collected ever,” he said.

Cappelletti said, “What really impressed me was four departments in our town got together and worked so hard together to do this for residents in our town who are struggling through really hard times.” She said the food bank had gotten so low they needed just about everything.

She said there wasn’t a thing they needed that wasn’t donated. Nonperishables like tuna, canned chicken, cereals, peanut butter and jelly aren’t the only things food banks need. They also need personal care items like toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss, soap, shampoo, conditioners, toilet paper and adult diapers. People donated them. They also donated cash, which Cappelletti said enables clients to purchase perishable foods unavailable at the food bank.

Asked how long the huge amount of donated items would last, Cappelletti estimated they might last until June, perhaps a little longer. She said COVID-19 has left so many people unemployed that the food bank is serving 30 to 35 families, some with as many as five kids.

The Middlebury Food Bank does not accept out-of-date products, but apparently not everyone knew that. Ten boxes of out-of-date items had to be discarded. One was dated 2014. Ten boxes may seem like a lot to discard but it was a small amount compared to the huge volume of donations. As Chief Kales said, the real winners, thanks to this food drive, are the food bank and its clients.