On Monday, August 26, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, AYLUS Roslyn volunteered with NOSH Delivers! Food Pantry. Founded in March 2020 to help families impacted by the pandemic, NOSH Delivers continues to help families in need and ceaselessly battles food insecurity every day.
From packing NOSH bags and kid lunches to sorting through produce and donated products to assisting shoppers, the Roslyn Branch members certainly had a busy and fulfilling day. Statistics reveal that 44 million people in the US face hunger, and one in four adults in New York struggles with food insecurity. And though those numbers seem daunting, NOSH is tackling the issue one step at a time. Filling a bag with rice, walnuts, green beans, and apple sauce, our volunteers packed nutritious NOSH bags that would be delivered to hundreds of families weekly. We also decorated paper bags with stickers and drawings and packed lunches consisting of a Capri Sun, a bag of chips, and a bag of ramen for the children. Each of our volunteers channeled all their creative efforts into beautifying the bags in hopes of bringing smiles to children’s faces. Sorting through fresh produce, our volunteers also filtered out moldy fruits, making sure the families only received healthy and nutritious foods and preventing other foods from being contaminated. We also stocked shelves, placing all the labels outwards, and delivered crates of vegetables and bread to the “farmer’s market”. When we were not hauling boxes of food or picking out rotten grapes, our volunteers helped shoppers select what they needed and sent them home with big bags of groceries.
While volunteering today, we witnessed carts and carts of food and products being delivered to the food pantry. All these foods were donated by corporations and stores such as Costco and collected through food drives of other organizations. Though it may not always feel this way, volunteering with NOSH Delivers! truly showed us how many kind-hearted people there were out there. Beholding such acts of compassion has inspired us to also give more to our community and embrace kindness in every aspect of our lives.
Members who participated include: Yang Amy Wu (4 hours), Tiffany Lin (4 hours), Hunter Chen (4 hours), Nancy Sethi (4 hours), and Charlotte Wu (3.5 hours).
Reporter: Yang Amy Wu