On Friday, July 12th from 9 am to 1 pm, the AYLUS Roslyn branch volunteered at NOSH Delivers, a food pantry located in Glen Cove. NOSH Delivers is a nonprofit that helps families get fresh groceries who cannot afford them. These bags of groceries are delivered to hundreds of families around the area. Along with grocery bags, families can pick up their own groceries at the NOSH food pantry.
Today, volunteers helped restock shelves that were running low, unpacked new shipments of food and handed out flyers. We restocked shelves of peanut butter, veggies, soups and drinks. We also organized the shelves to make more space for more dry goods. Then, we unpacked many boxes that arrived from Island Harvest yesterday. These contained new foods, such as creamy peanut butter, cooked beans, canned soups, sparkling grape juice, and snacks. We took the big boxes from the back and placed them on the shelves. Many customers were delighted to see the new variety of foods that we had. Next, we reorganized the snack section. We took out the bins of snacks and organized them by category, like chocolate, granola bars and chips. Then we put out the new snacks from Island Harvest, including chocolate bars, kitkats, oat bars, popcorn, gummies and lots of candy. Next, some of us split up and worked in the farmers market, handing out fresh produce, bread, eggs and soup. Many people were very glad to have fresh food to eat at home. The rest of us helped customers pick out the foods they wanted from the pantry. Some of the customers could not speak English or could only speak limited English. We used Spanish to help communicate with these customers. Finally, some of us left to go hand out flyers. Even in the pouring rain, we persisted and handed out as many flyers as we could.
We also learned about some of the other volunteers. They told us that they were long-time volunteers, and had been working here for a while already. One of the volunteer’s husband had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She said that she volunteers here because helping others brings her some peace of mind during a difficult time. We were impressed by the resilience of these volunteers. Even though they were going through difficult times, they still put a smile on their faces and came to help. We appreciate the impact food banks have on our community and hope to come back soon.
Reporter: Letao Tao
4 hours: Letao Tao, Anita Chen, Katrina Chen
