As Foodshare’s supplemental operation at Rentschler Field nears the end of it’s fourth week, the need for food in Connecticut continues.
Foodshare’s logisitcs manager, Dom Piccini, said volunteers have been serving about 12 people per minute.
“This is my little army. We couldn’t do it without them,” he said, referring to the Foodshare “soldiers,” made up of staff members and longtime and new volunteerswho continue to serve thousands of cars in the field’s parking lot.
“The beginning of the week is a little lower, so we’ll do 13,000-1,400 cars on Monday and then at the end of the week we’re at 2,100-2,500 cars a day,” said Piccini.
He said that Wednesday they hit a sad milestone of sorts, hitting a half million pounds of food distributed from a place that usual has lines of traffic for football games.
“It is kind of craziness. This is my first-time volunteering, but what they’re doing at Foodshare is so amazing I figured if I can give back in the best way possible why not do this,” said Michelle Cardono of Windsor
She was one of a few employees from Civic Leadership High School in Enfield who chose to participate in a scheduled day of public service at this drive-thru food distribution.
Despite all the changes, they’ve had with this school year, school social worker Linda Dadario wanted to provide to families of students they teach, some of whom were already struggling before the pandemic.
“Be grateful for what we have, but if there’s opportunities for us to give back and to help someone else in any way that we can, there’s so many opportunities big and small that we can do each day,” the East Haddam resident sadi.
Foodshare will have this location set up at least through the end of May and they’ll reevaluate the need as they get closer to June.
In the meantime, you can help by participating in NBC CT’s virtual “Feeding Our Families Food Drive.”
You can donate your time or money to help Foodshare and the CT Food Bank.
