Did you know that nearly 30% of families in Hartford are living in poverty? This means we have a lot of children here in our community facing food insecurity, especially on weekends when there is no opportunity for school breakfast or lunch. Studies have shown how important good nutrition and adequate food are to school performance and cognitive development. This is a true equity issue with long term impacts. And we know this: no child should go hungry or worry about whether there will be enough food to eat at home. That's where our Backpack Nutrition Program comes in - every week we deliver a backpack full of food for the weekend for 225 kids from 8 different Hartford schools. Each backpack contains two breakfasts, two lunches, plenty of snacks, juice, and shelf-stable milk. We also add weekly enhancements, like fresh fruit, canned chicken, community resource information and gifts like art supplies or Black History Month kits. We get lots of help from folks who volunteer, donate mac & cheese and other food and who give financial support. The feedback we get from parents is that they appreciate the extra kid-friendly food, which enables them to stretch their scarce resources. Our favorite kid comment is "I like that there is someone who cares."

We're often in need of volunteers to help sort through food donations and pack backpacks and we are always grateful for gifts of food and funds to help support this vital program. If you're passionate about helping ensure children in our community always have nourishing meals, please reach out to volunteer at volunteering@handsonhartford.org or make a philanthropic gift HERE.

Faith In Action

What a game! What support! The Super Bowl this year was SUPER exciting and First Presbyterian Church, Hartford was SUPER generous. They ran a successful "Souper Bowl" food collection, collecting a whopping 2,223 lbs of nonperishables for our MANNA Community Pantry. This is definitely the time of year we can use the help in keeping our shelves stocked. We are so lucky to have their support.

In addition to adopting Gather55 with amazing financial and volunteer support,

First Church in Windsor donated 100 outreach kits filled with snacks, handwarmers and socks - what a gift they are to the community.

Our friends from American Baptist Churches of CT worked hard to keep our Hartford neighbors warm and cozy with this generous donation of hats, blankets, sweatshirts, socks, handwarmers and more - we are so grateful to be able to share these with visitors to our programs and with folks our Homeless Outreach Tream connects with.

Thank you to The Lillian Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation for stopping by for a visit, a tour, and for dining with us at Gather55! We truly loved having them here and so appreciate their patronage of Gather55 and their interest in our work.

We are excited to announce that our friends at Delamar West Hartford, in partnership with Artisan West Hartford, are hosting a Chef’s Tasting Dinner at Artisan Restaurant on

Thursday, April 20 at 6:00PM.

Proceeds of this exclusive tasting dinner will benefit Hands On Hartford and our mission of strengthening the community in Hartford by responding faithfully to people in need, through programs that change lives and renew human possibility.

To learn more and purchase tickets: CLICK HERE!

Welcome Rebecca to the Hands On Hartford team!

Look Who Has Their hands on Hartford!

Julie Bergeron, who is one of the many talented artists/muralists with our non-profit neighbor, The RiseUP Group/RiseUP for Arts, taught a fun and educational painting class for some of our Gather55 guests this past week, sparking the creativity and talent of these eager-to-learn participants. We think they did AMAZING and it seems we have a few budding artists in our midst.

Julie's art can be seen all over the state, including 2 murals right around the corner at Parkville Market and on Pope Park Highway. We also have photos of 2 of her beautiful murals in Gather55, thanks to @streetartfromtheroad (a good friend of Hands On Hartford).

We encourage you to stop by Gather55, and drive around our Parkville neighborhood, to see some of it firsthand. We just love the creativity and talent Hartford is growing and are so happy to be a part of it.

We were super excited to host a service project with a new partner, LTIMindtree Ltd, here at Hands On Hartford. While here, they learned all about Hands On Hartford, attended a Faces of Homelessness speaking event, and packed outreach kits for our Homeless street outreach team - we just love the energy and commitment to the community!

We truly felt the love this month!

Our friends, Stacey (President & Founder) and Sherry (Executive Assistant) at Infoshred LLC, where they are "committed to making a difference and helping to make the world a better place", stopped by to surprise us with a very generous gift of warm socks, t-shirts, sleeping bags, and a very-handy rolling cart in honor of their "25 Weeks of Giving". We were stop #9 on their tour and feel so grateful for their thoughtfulness in helping to keep our Hartford neighbors, who are experiencing homelessness, warm this winter.