For the 22nd year in a row, a group of volunteers, including food-pantry workers, teachers, farmers, students, and Teamsters got together to create a “human food chain” that stretched to Worcester from farms in Western Massachusetts.
The food drive is the brainchild of Jennifer Callahan, a former state representative, who says that it fills a niche by supplying fresh produce to places that might not have access to it for Thanksgiving.
This year’s effort started early on the morning of Saturday, November 19, when Callahan bought approximately $10,000 worth of vegetables and fruits from local farms in Western Massachusetts. The 22 tons of food were loaded onto a waiting tractor-trailer by teamsters from Local 170.
About 12:30 pm the same day, more links in the “human food chain” got together at the South Worcester Neighborhood Center to accept the deliveries of food. They included volunteers from the center itself, along with over two dozen North Middlesex Regional High School students. According to the center’s director Ronald Charette, the produce will fill about 410 Thanksgiving baskets for the needy.
The truck and the volunteers made a second stop and unloaded more produce at St. Peter’s Church Pantry at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, where Monsignor Frank Scollen said the produce would feed about 525 families.
Efforts like this can benefit if organizers work with flyer printing companies, which can create materials detailing the effort for area-wide Mailing.
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