The Easton Senior Center has partnered for decades with community groups and residents to provide Thanksgiving meals to those in need.
But this year has been the most successful yet in terms of the amount of food donated and help offered for the project. The drive has collected enough canned veggies, corn, cranberries, gravy, boxed potatoes, stuffing, canned fruit, soup, bread rolls and cake mix to fill 140 bags to feed needy families in the area.
“We’ve climbed from doing about 20 bags of groceries to 140 complete bags ready to be delivered on Thursday morning,” said Val Buckley, senior center director.
The idea for the senior center to organize a holiday food drive started many years ago after Victoria Fenwick, a counselor in Stratford and Bridgeport, would tell Buckley about a family in need.
“After 2010, we got more serious about it,” said Buckley. “We started a Fresh Start food pantry, and it has materialized year by year.”
This year’s drive was a community effort. Joel Barlow High School decorated 140 bags for the drive. Samuel Staples Elementary School hosted a Turkey Trot where people donated all sorts of canned goods.
“We even had the PTA help get everything together here that was donated to Samuel Staples school,” said Buckley.
The Freemasons from Easton showed up at the Senior Center with 10 $20 Shoprite gift certificates. Several of the seniors who frequent the senior center wrote out checks to put toward the food and donations.
“The most important donation was made by Mark Stowell, a painter from Newtown, who donated 100 turkeys,” said Buckley. “His mom comes to play games at the center.”
Cassie Konstantino, who works the front desk alongside Buckley, spent a good amount of time this week organizing the food. Volunteers kept a close eye on weather reports and took action quickly when they realized it was going to rain when the meals will get shipped out.
“She spent this morning bagging all of the meals and decorated bags so they wouldn’t get ruined in the rain,” said Buckley of Konstantino.
“The bags contain things like stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn and beans, cranberry sauce, some kind of dessert and cornbread,” said Konstantino. “Some have juice and a few of them even have soup.”
Stowell, who donated all the turkeys, will also help to get the meals loaded onto the two buses that will deliver them to the many families who need them. There are enough donations this year to allow bigger families and families who are facing especially difficult financial challenges to receive extra items in their bags.
“This has turned out to be an awesome project,” said Buckley.
