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Katonah, NY

Greeley High School Student Creates Local Food Drive in Lewisboro to Help Feed Families in Need in Our Community

High School Student Creates Local Food Drive in Lewisboro to Help Feed Families in Need in Our Community

Caroline Gershman, a rising senior and honor student at Greeley High School in Chappaqua, has created a food drive in Lewisboro supported by Green Way Markets to collect non-perishables for the Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry over the next several weeks.

Caroline has a donation bin located at the entrance of Green Way Markets, located at 20 N. Salem Road in Cross River, where shoppers are encouraged to purchase an extra non-perishable item or two when they buy groceries and donate the item into the bin on their way out of the store. The sign on Caroline’s donation bin lists the items that the food pantry is seeking including instant oatmeal, canned corn, canned black beans, 2-pound bags of rice or black beans, canned tuna and canned salmon. As the bin gets filled up, Caroline will be delivering the donated items to the food pantry.

The Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry serves families in Northern Westchester including families here in Lewisboro and Katonah. The pantry, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is one of the main food pantries in our area which had been serving 300 families per week prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. Now the current situation has stressed the resources of the pantry and the demand has more than doubled to serving over 700 families who need help each week.

Caroline also created a GoFundMe campaign that she calls “Kick Hunger in Westchester,” where she is seeking to raise $1,000 with all proceeds going to the Mt. Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry. Here is the link to her fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/kick-hunger-in-westchester?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

Caroline started helping to address food insecurity in the area last spring by creating a tomato planting class for clients served by the Mt. Kisco Food Pantry. She reached out to local nurseries and got them to donate starter plants and pots and then she purchased the soil and gave a class on how to plant and grow “container” tomatoes for families who live in apartments and do not have backyards. Then this past winter she partnered with the non-profit, Emergency Shelter Partnership, and contacted local restaurants and grocery stores to provide hot food for the homeless for several nights while they were housed at local houses of worship in Northern Westchester. Since Caroline is a soccer player, she came up with the name “Kick Hunger in Westchester” as a way to tie together her service efforts targeted toward creating awareness about and reducing food insecurity for families in our area.

As Caroline says, “Families going hungry in our community and surrounding communities is not something that people usually associate with Westchester County, but this hidden issue has become even more dire as a result of the Coronavirus and the impact it is having.”

She goes on to say, “I am so thankful for how Green Way Markets generously supported my hot-food drive for the homeless this past winter so I asked if they would support a non-perishable food drive now to help families affected by COVID-19 and they immediately embraced the idea.”

 
 
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Submitted by Katonah, NY

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