On Friday, August 9, from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm, the AYLUS Roslyn Branch participated in the NOSH Delivers! food pantry. NOSH delivers! was founded in March of 2020 to bring food to local families impacted by the pandemic. Four years later, volunteers provide food to many of these same families as they continue to struggle with food insecurity. They deliver weekly NOSH bags, filled with nutritious groceries, to hundreds of families. Also, many families now come to the NOSH food Pantry to pick up their own groceries.
Today, our main job was to guide customers to choose their food. Consumers could choose from a variety of meat, eggs, milk, pasta, beans, bread, vegetables, fruits, drinks, cereal, and even snacks. We helped them pick out the foods they needed.
At first, there weren’t a lot of people coming in. We thought it might be the bad weather, which was cloudy and windy. However, starting from 10:00 am, more people began to come in. When they started choosing the food, we let them know that they could only take a certain amount of that type of food because there needed to be enough for everyone. Customers were delighted to see the new variety of foods that we had. When there were no customers, we stocked the snack section. We organized them by category, like granola bars and chips. Finally, we went to the neighborhood to hand out flyers. Even in the strong wind, we still handed out as many flyers as we could.
Every time a customer left, we felt very happy that we were able to help their family who didn’t have sufficient food for the weekend. We hope that we can provide more food for the people in need.
Members who participated: Leah Chan (4 hours), Lily Zhang (4 hours)
Reporter: Lily Zhang